Unbecoming

Author: ​Joanne Fedler
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Reviewer: Beryl Eichenberger
Fearless and feisty is how i would describe Joanne Fedler’s new novel “Unbecoming” . Published by Penguin Random House this is a story that packs a punch with its bold, humorous and beautiful writing. For any woman who has suffered or is suffering the ‘slings and arrows’ of menopause this novel will take you by the hand and lead you into a place that is so familiar, binding as it does the sisterhood of over 50s, the changes that are wrought in those years and the process of finding the new person that is you. ‘Unbecoming’ by Joanne Fedler is written with huge empathy, pithy prose and laugh 

out loud moments that catch you unawares. 
As Fedler warns in the author’s note – ‘you are about to enter perilous terrain’. For women of this age are entering their last phase of life and what the hell are they going to do now the kids are grown, childbearing is over and perhaps the partner is not quite up to expectations. It is a trying and turbulent time. 
Set in Australia, protagonist Jo has taken a three month sabbatical – a sort of eat, pray, love quest - from husband and adult children. Writer’s block, is she happy with Frank, her children’s choices, all have become bewildering questions in her life. When she bumps into former friend Fiona who suggests she joins her and some friends on a ‘sacred silent walk’ to mark her 57th birthday, Jo is reluctant to say the least. Not her friends, not her thing at all, not one to bare her soul…a lot of nots and yet she is persuaded.  And into the bush they go these six dissimilar women – or so it seems. For one night they experience the midnight sky, camping out,peeing through  special funnel (i kid you not) fabulous food and meet a stranger who unleashes such powerful and conflicting emotions that they are all forced to take stock. Tongues are loosened, secrets shared and futures become clearer as the wild land creeps into their bones and preconceived ideas are taken on the wind. As perceptions, women’s rights and stereotypes are dissected Fedler draws on her talent to expose and shock as the conversations turn inwards and revealing.
Fedler draws the most wonderful and memorable characters. The gentle Fiona, struggling with her husband’s death,  the earth-child attuned to nature, the immigrant Yasmin with her passion for food and her cultural family history, brittle Liz, corporate to the core with her own pain, nurse Kiri who is the all-embracing mother earth and the profane Cate who says it likes it is. Deliciously colourful they are all pursuing the ‘what next?’ They are the friends each of us know and love.
“Menopause is where sexism meets ageism’. Ouch! Here we are in the 21st Century and still women contend with the stigma of normal bodily functions, those bodily functions that bring life and latterly give us a new path.  In my own experience i have seen the blossoming of over 50s women as they experience a new freedom and creativity. Fedler takes us through this dense bush and brings us out on the other side into the gleam of a different liberated future. ​