6A — Monday, January 26, 2015
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Sherm’s intricate 
‘Unbecoming’

University alumnus 

releases debut 
mystery novel

By CAROLYN DARR

Daily Arts Writer

“The first lie Grace had told 

Hanna was her name. ‘Bonjour, 
je m’appelle Julie,’ Grace had 
said. She’d been in Paris for 
only a month and her French 
was still new and stiff. She’d 
chosen the name Julie because 
it was sweet and easy on the 
French tongue — much more so 
than Grace was. The best lies 
were the simplest and made the 
most sense, in the mind and in 
the mouth. These lies were the 
easiest to swallow.”

Thus 
begins 
Rebecca 

Scherm’s debut novel “Unbe-
coming,” and from there the 
reader 
must 
follow 
Grace 

through all the lies as her past 
is slowly revealed.

We are first introduced to 

Grace, or Julie, in Paris, as a 
young 
American 
expatriate 

scraping out a living restoring 
antiques at Zanzu et Filles. The 
only time she allows herself to 
think about her past is for a few 
minutes each night when she 
anxiously checks the Albemar-
le Record, the only newspaper 
in her small home town of Gar-
land, Tennesse. Through the 
lens of an a former classmate’s 
reporting, she has followed the 
arrest and subsequent incar-
ceration of Riley and Alls, the 
love of her life and his best 
friend.

Throughout 
the 
novel 

Scherm takes her readers back 
and forth between Grace’s 

impoverished present in Paris 
and her idyllic past in Garland, 
where she met and fell in love 
with Riley Graham in sixth 
grade. She quickly became part 
of the Graham family, with a 
room made up especially for 
her in the attic and Mrs. Gra-
ham becoming a beautiful and 
elegant surrogate mother. The 
Grahams 
were 
everything 

Grace’s family wasn’t and she 
quickly became accustomed 
to the love she found in their 
inner fold. Now, Riley and his 
friend Alls are getting out of 
prison and the truth is that the 
fault for their convication lies 
with Grace. Now she can never 
come home or have any contact 
with anyone from her past, liv-
ing with the constant fear that 
her history will catch up with 
her.

Scherm intricately arrang-

es her story, sanding off each 
layer to reveal a different com-
plication underneath, much as 

Grace painstakingly restores 
the antique James Mont box 
she finds in a Paris flea mar-
ket. As both a classic romance 
and a scintillating mystery, 
“Unbecoming” keeps readers 
engrossed through a multi-
tude of twists and surprises. 
Grace herself is an extremely 
multilayered character, a self-
proclaimed liar that the reader 
knows is untrustworthy from 
the beginning. Yet, even as 
more of her is revealed and her 
good-girl veneer disintegrates, 
Grace manages to hold your 
interest, if only to find out if 
she gets what is coming to her.

Scherm received her MFA 

from the University and par-
ticipated in the Zell Fellows 
Program as a post-graduate. 
The author will be at Literati 
Bookstore on Tuesday at 7 
p.m. to celebrate the launch of 
her novel and the beginning 
of many readers’ journey into 
Grace’s life and lies.

Sam Smith’s soulful 
songs at Masonic 

By GIBSON JOHNS

Daily Arts Writer

There was one point during 

his Thursday show in Detroit 
during 
which 
Sam 
Smith 

seemed like he might actually 
still be lonely. After all, he had 
announced his recent break-up 
at a show in Toronto just two 
days earlier. He was singing the 
tender album cut “Good Thing” 
and had everyone in the audi-
ence wondering if the song’s 
lyrics (“Too much of a good 
thing, won’t be good for long / 
Although you made my heart 
sing, to stay with you would be 
wrong”) had almost become too 
real, considering his presum-
ably still-open wounds.

But, as the song came to 

a close and the audience’s 
screaming reached new heights, 
Smith couldn’t help but flash 
his signature 100-watt smile. 
It’s impossible to be lonely with 
that much enthusiastic, unre-
lenting support.

Smith’s rise to the top ech-

elons of pop music has been 
meteoric. After he performed 
on “Saturday Night Live” last 
March, he has had a string of 
hits of his own (“Stay With 
Me,” “I’m Not The Only One”) 
that capitalized on the success 
of a couple of high-profile fea-
tures 
(Disclosure’s 
“Latch,” 

Naughty Boy’s “La La La”). He 
played to a sold-out crowd at 
Madison Square Garden earlier 
this month, which is unheard 
of for an artist that was virtu-
ally unknown less than a year 
ago. In February, he’s up for 
six Grammy awards, including 
Best New Artist, which he’ll 
almost surely win.

Last May, I saw Sam Smith 

perform in Amsterdam, Neth-
erlands to a packed house in 

a venue about a third of the 
size of the Detroit Masonic 
Temple. Though the splendor 
and natural range of his voice 
was shocking in a way that 
hadn’t been apparent through 
my iPod’s earbuds, there was 
something missing from his 
physical presence. For all the 
ways that his voice filled the 
room — it was truly something 
I had never experienced before 
in my entire life — his demean-
or was remarkably lacking and 
timid. He didn’t move around 
much on stage, and he avoided 
interaction with the audience.

On Thursday, things could 

not have been more different. 
In just over half a year, Smith 
had turned what had been a 
major flaw in his potential into 
a quality that has been instru-
mental to his success. Between 
songs 
he 
was 
endearingly 

bashful. 
His 
high-pitched, 

self-assured 
speaking 
voice 

had everyone in the audience 
— doe-eyed little girls, tipsy 
mothers, adoring college stu-
dents, stoic elderly couples — 
reeled-in and swooning over 
his every word.

Throughout his 16-song set, 

Smith was at the top of his game. 
Dressed in black and white, he 
effortlessly went from the low-
est of lows (the desperate plead-
ing of “Leave Your Lover” and 
the heartbreaking accusations 
of “I’m Not The Only One”) to 
the highest of highs (the unwav-
ering confidence of “Money On 
My Mind” and the revengeful 
scorn of “Like I Can”) with-
out ever showing any signs of 
burnout after his busy last 12 
months. He danced in sync with 
his backup singers, encouraged 
crowd engagement and willing-
ly narrated the stories behind 
his songs.

The 
emotional 
high-point 

of the night came during his 
three-song encore. “I refused to 
end my album on a sad note,” he 
said. “I wanted this next song 
to be a love letter to my future 
boyfriend, whoever he may be.”

He then started “Make It To 

Me” a capella, sitting side-by-
side with his backup singers. 
The moment was memorable 
in its brutal, no-fuss honesty 
that paired brilliantly with the 
song’s hopeful lyrics. It proved 
that Smith is an open book 
when it comes to his music. He 
may not share the most inti-
mate details of his life when he 
speaks, but it’s OK. His silence 
is made irrelevant by his lyrics.

Sam Smith is, admittedly, not 

lonely anymore. He’s content 
with where he is in life because, 
even though he may not have 
found someone to fall in love 
with yet, if the line of adoring 
fans that lined up around the 
block three hours before his 
show proved anything, there 
are millions of people around 
the world that have fallen in 
love with him.

And that’s company enough 

for one of the world’s biggest 
pop stars.

REBECCA SHERM

Our columnists wish they could look this good.

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