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In Isa Arsén’s second novel The Unbecoming of Margaret Wolf she continues with the poorly contrived plot points, anachronisms, and risible metaphor that littered her debut Shoot the Moon. Set in the 1950’s, Unbecoming is about two up-and-coming Shakespearean actors, Wesley Shoard and Margaret Wolf. They’ve just had a successful run with Twelfth Night and Macbeth is coming up next. Lady Macbeth is a role Margaret has always wanted to play, and she sees it as a breakthrough, especially with Wesley as leading man. A problem arises, though, when the House Unamerican Activities Committee starts an investigation into Wesley. He fears he will be arrested soon, and he asks Margaret to marry him. Wesley is gay, and he wants Margaret to be his ‘beard,’ ostensibly to provide cover and mislead the HUAC into believing he’s a good heterosexual American man. This is of course absurd—the HUAC investigated people they believed to be communists regardless of sexual orientation and he faced potential arrest whether he was married to a woman or not. And it’s with this absurdly contrived marriage that our story gets underway.

When actor Jonathan Majors was arrested in March of 2023 on charges of strangulation, assault, and harassment of his girlfriend, scores of other people stepped forward to give testimony about Majors’ toxic behavior both on set and off. His lawyer gave statements to the press about Majors style of acting, which was Method acting, and tried to use that as an excuse—as if he was so deep into his character he couldn’t control himself. When the case ultimately went to trial, she did not use Method acting as a defense, knowing that a jury wouldn’t buy it. In Unbecoming, Margaret becomes so involved in Lady Macbeth, Margaret hallucinates Lady Macbeth’s presence nearly everywhere she goes, usually in a mirror looking over Margaret’s shoulder. Opening night is a smashing success, there are multiple curtain calls, and finally Margaret retires to her dressing room. There’s a vase of flowers waiting for her, sent by Wesley. She inexplicably flings the vase against the wall, smashing it to shards, and stands there staring at the mess while the director, Ezra Pierce, pounds on her door demanding to know what’s going on in there with all the racket. Margaret does not open the door, she screams at Ezra to get Wesley for her. It’s not apparent why she wants Wesley—unless you are familiar with Macbeth. In the play, Lady Macbeth commits suicide and Margaret is so in-character as she’s looking at the shards of glass she’s thinking of using the shards to slash her wrists. Indeed, Wesley doesn’t arrive in time and Margaret slashes her wrists and is taken to a hospital where her life is saved. The psychiatrist she begins seeing after leaving the hospital prescribes powdered amphetamine for her; she is to snort it up her nose daily.

Of course, suicide by an actor who is overly in-character is ridiculous, and coming after the sham excuse for the sham marriage, a reader might be tempted to hurl the book across the room. It would be a good choice. The book gets more absurd as it goes on. By the way, Unbecoming may have been thoroughly combed through by a ‘sensitivity reader’; the word suicide does not appear anywhere in it. Neither does the word rape, even though a character is violently raped.

After they finish their run of Macbeth, another theater, The Sumner Glove in Lake Sumner, New Mexico, wants to hire the troupe to perform Titus Andronicus. It would mean a brief separation for Margaret and Wesley since Margaret is no longer with the troupe, having been put on leave by Ezra after her ‘episode.’ However, Wesley asks permission to take Margaret along which is of course granted. As to why The Sumner Globe couldn’t hire a troupe closer to home, we’re told Ezra owes a debt to the owner of the Globe, which itself is absurd because the owner is going to pay the actors and crew enormous sums to perform.

Arsén gives an accurate portrayal of theater life—actors do not say the word ‘Macbeth’ while the play is in production, a superstition that has persisted over the years, believing that saying it will bring misfortune. Actors usually refer to it as ‘the Scottish play’ and if someone should inadvertently utter the word they can counteract the curse by spinning around three times and spitting on the ground.

There are multiple tumultuous affairs between the players and everybody’s ambitious. However, it’s all buried under clunky prose and poor metaphor and simile. ‘Wesley tipped his head back and exhaled a rarified (sic) piston into the air.’ ‘[T]he laugh that scraped itself out of my mouth.’ When Margaret gets the news that she will be cast as Lady Macbeth, ‘A white fuzz buzzed and bloomed between my ears.’ Imprecise metaphor can, and should, be a delight, but in the hands of an unskilled writer it goes beyond imprecise to downright wrong: ‘I had put contentment there in his heart, lodged like an arrowhead.’ Margaret describes her first dose of prescribed amphetamine: ‘A flood of bliss oozed pierced egg yolk across my brain.’ Just like in her last novel, there are multiple instances of itching teeth. Also like her last novel, the sex scenes are cringey: ‘An urgent pulse of need lit up between my legs.’

While the Lake Sumner theater was willing to pay the actors top dollar, they weren’t willing to pay top dollar to transport them—they had to ride in a caravan of minibuses. An enigmatic costume designer, Felix Haas, catches the eye of Margaret—and of Wesley too. The inevitable three-way (and inevitable blow up) has been set. Also set is Margaret’s return to the stage—the director decides to scrap Titus and do Macbeth instead. Margaret is offered the role of Lady Macbeth and accepts it. (A nearby bookstore just happened to have enough folios on hand for the entire cast.) Felix is also a drug dealer—he makes his own custom stimulant that is snorted just like Margaret’s prescription, but Felix’s is much stronger, and yes, Margaret’s hallucinations of Lady Macbeth return. The drug-fueled three-ways become too much for Margaret and Wesley and they hatch a laughably absurd plot to murder Felix.

Arsén tries to be a realist here (in Shoot the Moon she delved into science fiction), but there are still a few annoying anachronisms. Margaret and Wesley visit the Stork Club in Manhattan and when Wesley tries to tip the waiter ten dollars as they are being seated, the waiter returns the money to Wesley’s breast pocket. During the show’s intermission, the emcee takes the stage and makes a joke about tipping the waitstaff which gets laughs from the patrons. We aren’t told what the joke was, but Arsén seems to be implying here that tipping was not allowed at the Stork Club. The wealthy and famous patrons of the Stork Club were of course known as generous tippers—one waiter was tipped ten thousand dollars once, another time a waiter was tipped a Cadillac. I’m not really sure what she was trying to get at here. And then she has Margaret using birth control pills even though the FDA approval for them was five years into the future. Arsén could have cleared that up by just showing how Margaret got them on the black market. Madeline Martin, author of The Last Bookshop in London, says of Unbecoming: ‘With exquisite writing and vivid emotion, Arsén pulls you into the fifties in a way that is both atmospheric and thrilling.’ I guess we all have our own definition of ‘exquisite.’

The Unbecoming of Margaret Wolf
by Isa Arsén, 351 pages
Putnam, $30.00

originally published in The Gorko Gazette