When I hear about a new novel which features a restorer or conservator as a major character, I am always hopeful that it will be one in which the restorer\/conservator neither solves\u00a0mysteries nor is a thief or forger. \u00a0Unfortunately, \u201cUnbecoming\u201d, by Rebecca Scherm (Viking, 2015) is not that novel.
\nThe main character, Grace, is a thief and forger as is her colleague, Hanna.\u00a0 When they speak about restoration it is in the least complimentary of terms. Talking about her life after she was released from prison for forgery, Hanna says, \u201cWell, I had to find something else I could do. \u00a0And restoration, as you know, is not so far from forgery. Except the work is half done for you.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0When Grace thinks about her work, she notes that as long as the clients \u201ckept their valuables close, away from carbon dating and fluorescent spectroscopes, no one would be disappointed.\u201d
\nIsn\u2019t it time that someone write a novel that features a protagonist who is like the real life conservators we know?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I hear about a new novel which features a restorer or conservator as a major character, I am always hopeful that it will be one in which the restorer\/conservator neither solves\u00a0mysteries nor is a thief or forger. \u00a0Unfortunately, \u201cUnbecoming\u201d, by Rebecca Scherm (Viking, 2015) is not that novel. The main character, Grace, is a … Continue reading “When will someone write that book?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13798\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}