The narrator really really isn’t Lesley, but she is a new department chair - a position Lesley suffered through a few years ago. The narrator’s English department isn’t entirely unlike our English department - though that’s probably true of any small liberal arts English department? The main characters work at a liberal arts college that isn’t entirely unlike W&L University. The novel is most definitely not autobiographical, and yet it does take place in a small southern town that isn’t entirely unlike Lexington, VA.

The parts are familiar, but their placement and proportions are off. For me reading Unbecoming is like gazing into a funhouse mirror. It’s such an exciting book, I wanted to be part of it. The above design is my own arty tinkering, done while Lesley was revising the final draft. The actual book’s design is by Aqueduct Press’s Kathryn Wilham, and it’s a lot more legible, especially when viewed online as a thumbnail, which is how book covers tend to be viewed these days. The proportions and placement of Lesley’s name are a little off from the actual cover, and the fox isn’t framed inside the title letters there either. The font is the same too - or it almost is.

I mean that is the John Audubon illustration of an American Cross-Fox from his 1851 The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America that Lesley researched and selected for her cover art. This is not the cover to Lesley Wheeler’s new novel Unbecoming:Įxcept it kinda is.

Unbecoming by Lesley Wheeler