Becoming
A memoir about Williams finding a sense of identity and self-worth, which gets better the further you read.
Laura Jane Williams tells the story of being dumped by her school sweetheart, and rebuilding her sense of self-worth. She travels to Italy to teach English, sleeps with a string of men followed by a year of celibacy, and finds meaning in female friendships. Along the way, she starts writing a “sex memoir” of her life and growth.
Overall I liked the book, but the beginning is slow and reeks of the “sex memoir” allied to later in the book – it took me a while to get into this book. As she grows, she sees the flaws and dullness of the initial draft, but it’s not quite been expunged. The book improves as Laura herself grows, and puts her ex behind her.
The narrative is non-linear in parts and it doesn’t have a traditional romantic ending, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The big romantic moment – flying to New York for a boy – is a bust, but the whole book is made better for the realism. It’s an account of how we’re all messy, complicated people.
I bought this book years ago, when Williams hosted a book signing with Meg Fee in London. It’s sat on my shelf ever since, a splash of pink I’m glad to have finally read.
Favourite quotes
P110 (emphasis mine):
I never felt bad about moving on to the next [man], because it didn’t mean anything anyway. That’s why I was a slut I’m not afraid of that word. That isn’t loaded language for me; just fact. I was a slut because not one of those men could disprove my theory. Nobody saved me from myself. I had to learn that there was only one person for that job: me.
P124 has a lovely letter that Laura wrote to her future self, about the importance of having stories to tell when you meet Your Person:
They’re on their way. Your person. it might not be today, though – in fact, it’s probably not today, or even tomorrow – and that’s exactly how it should be. You’re not with the person of your life because you are the person of your life. They are extra. It will happen when it happens. But it will happen.
You can admit that life seems better as part of a two, if you want. But don’t sit and wait. Don’t simply pass the time until they arrive. You are worth a thousand more dreams than that.
Continue, with full speed ahead, to be wonderful, to be you, to live, because your one? They need you to have stories. To be in full colour, already, without them, so that they can spot you in the otherwise black and white crowd.
And then, when you meet, finally, there’ll be so very much to say.
P184, when talking to one of the students on her Italian summer school:
Chiara looked like my mother’s best friend. Her confidence and determination was astonishing – but the older I get, the more I think confidence is the privilege of the young. We grow into fear when we comprehend how precious what we have is to lose.
P204, which made me chuckle because it reminds me of how my partner and I behaved before we started dating:
‘It’s almost time to meet [Emma],’ I said. ‘We should go wait at the spot she said.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ Hal said to me, reaching out to put a hand on the back of my neck to guide me back to the bus stop. I wondered if we looked like boyfriend and girlfriend to other passing tourists.
P210 is a lovely description of a future that never existed:
He looked at me, almost causing me to fall off the bike. ‘I’m just following your example,’ he said. ‘Taking life by the balls.’ In his boyish grin I saw a future. I saw a tiny Chinese apartment where we could roast vegetables and play Scrabble and host dinner parties. I saw him in my parents’ living room, and at Calum’s birthday party, and in Paris to visit Mary-Kate for the weekend. I saw him at my book launch, talking to my editor about the time we went to Switzerland together and he first heard about this story I was penning, and everyone in the literary world would think him a darling.
P227 talks about her ex David, and a lovely romantic gesture:
When we were nineteen, he’d gone skiing with his family for a week. I told him not to call because I’d miss him too much – I hated to be apart. When he didn’t call for eight days, I was devastated and incensed. He’s forgotten me, I thought. The day he arrived home so did nine letters, all at once, postmarked from Val d’Isere. He’d written me a love letter every day of his trip, and missed me as much as I missed him.
And later on the same page, letting David be happy in his life and letting go of any lingering resentment:
David had, since before I understood it, worshipped me. Loved me better than any first love could’ve, and it set the bar so very high. I wasn’t mad at him for moving on, for loving somebody new. I’d loved him harder than anyone else in my life, and I wanted him to be happy. He was. He was getting married. He had a whole new adventure to pour his love into, and I was left behind, my hands full of adoration and love and longing, and totally terrified of where to put it.
P230 has some thoughts for the future:
I see hope at the end of my rainbow, I wrote slowly. Deliberately. I can’t ever promise anybody that I will love them forever, but goddamn it I’ll promise them I’ll try, every day. I’m ready to experiment with myself and see how it feels to give 100 per cent. They tell me it’s quite the experience. It’s been so long don’t think I remember. I’d like to be reminded.
On page 244, she uses one of my favourite quotes to remind Hal of his time in Italy:
Laura Jane Williams / September 5th 21:01:
‘you get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place, like you’ll not only miss the people you love but you’ miss the person you are now at this time and place because you’ll never be this way ever again’
hold on to the person you were in italy
he was a good one
And finally, this description of a miserable person on page 290 made me chuckle, because I’ve met people like this:
It took the length of my smoke to figure out the guy bemoaning the state of the world had died at thirty-three and had been waiting to be buried ever since. Disenchanted doesn’t come into it – he was miserable. Miserable people are determined to make everyone else feel the same.