How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Visit Isa Arsén's website.
This title reveals the entire conflict to the reader, if they know where to look. Unbecoming is lifted directly from a line of dialogue in Macbeth, a Shakespeare play with themes & character relationships woven into this novel. It comes from a scene in which Lady Macbeth is convincing a dinner crowd that her husband is fine, actually, despite his mental turmoil over the choices she has pushed him to make; holding up decorum, desperate to come across as normal. Margaret Wolf is our protagonist's name, and fitting to feature up front since the reader spends the entire book placed directly in her internal monologue. As a whole, the title speaks to strange, uncouth change -- when something is "unbecoming" it may be unsightly, disgusting, or unfit for civility. It's a book about rebirth through complete dissolution, and I think the title evokes...[read on]
Q&A with Isa Arsén.
--Marshal Zeringue
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