Biography of X
Published on 6. April 2023
Book
Hardback
416 pages
978-1-78378-927-6 (ISBN)
Description
When X - an iconoclastic artist, writer and polarizing shape-shifter - dies suddenly, her widow, wild with grief, hurls herself into writing a biography of the woman she deified. Though X was recognised as a crucial creative force of her era, she kept a tight grip on her life story. Not even CM, her wife, knew where X had been born, and in her quest to find out, she opens a Pandora's box of secrets, betrayals and destruction. All the while she immerses herself in the history of the Southern Territory, a fascist theocracy that split from the rest of the country after World War II, as it is finally, in the present day, forced into an uneasy reunification.
A masterfully constructed, counter-factual literary adventure, complete with original images assembled by X's widow, Biography of X follows a grieving wife seeking to understand the woman who enthralled her. CM traces X's peripatetic trajectory over decades, from Europe to the ruins of America's divided territories, and through her collaborations and feuds with everyone from David Bowie and Tom Waits to Susan Sontag and Kathy Acker. And when she finally understands the scope of X's defining artistic project, CM realises her wife's deceptions were far crueller than she imagined.
Pulsing with suspense and intellect, Biography of X is a roaring epic that plumbs the depths of grief, art and love, and that introduces an unforgettable character who shows us the fallibility of the stories we craft for ourselves.
A masterfully constructed, counter-factual literary adventure, complete with original images assembled by X's widow, Biography of X follows a grieving wife seeking to understand the woman who enthralled her. CM traces X's peripatetic trajectory over decades, from Europe to the ruins of America's divided territories, and through her collaborations and feuds with everyone from David Bowie and Tom Waits to Susan Sontag and Kathy Acker. And when she finally understands the scope of X's defining artistic project, CM realises her wife's deceptions were far crueller than she imagined.
Pulsing with suspense and intellect, Biography of X is a roaring epic that plumbs the depths of grief, art and love, and that introduces an unforgettable character who shows us the fallibility of the stories we craft for ourselves.
Reviews / Votes
A dazzling novel... Unbearable loss reveals itself as the compelling, moving heart of this intricately layered novel * Sunday Times * Discerning facts from fiction is the pleasure of this Russian doll of a book: a biography of an imaginary subject, written by an imaginary biographer, housed inside a novel pretending not to be one... Biography of X is almost certainly one of the most interesting books you'll read this year * Financial Times * From the superb opening line to [Lacey's] skewering of the art world and its pretensions, her discernments on grief and loss, the book is endlessly quotable... Come for the glamorous premise, stay for the icy precision of the prose * Irish Times * Catherine Lacey's brilliant, astonishing new novel... Everything in Lacey's novel is turned upside down -- Chris Kraus * Washington Post * Biography of X is the most ambitious book I've ever read from a writer of my own generation. Epic world-building revealed through intimate emotion and dangerously honed sentences; a story that mixes fact and fiction to create a new register of truth, a register that belongs entirely to Catherine Lacey. I'm awed -- Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby I'm not sure I know another novel that manages to be so many books at once... A profound novel about love and what it can license, about the toll - and maybe the con - of genius. Only Catherine Lacey could have written it -- Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness A triumphant high-wire act: all the breadth of a 19th century classic with the propulsiveness of a psychological thriller. I stayed up too late, wishing to uncover X's secrets alongside the narrator -- Sara Novic, author of Girl at War Sly, brilliant, philosophically acute, bitingly funny... a pure joy... It feels fairly rare for a novel to be hugely intelligent and moving and fun in equal measure, but with Biography of X, Catherine Lacey somehow - magically - makes the nearly impossible look easy. -- Lauren Groff Biography of X is a work of wonder, written with brilliant attention to detail... No single book can ever truly express who a person is or was. Catherine Lacey's ambitious novel promises no such thing - and is all the more fun for it * New Statesman * By turns laugh-out-loud funny and painfully sad... I couldn't help finding it all heartbreakingly real * Telegraph * [A] haunting, genre-bending novel... It's like looking at a family photograph in which something truly extraordinary - an avalanche or alien invasion - is taking place in the background * Guardian * Breathtaking in its scope and rigor, this unforgettable novel pushes contemporary fiction to dizzying heights. A triumph * Kirkus * [A] blockbuster novel... truly outstanding * Wall Street Journal * Utterly compelling... Exploring themes including freedom, truth, identity and myth-making on personal, political and national levels * Daily Mail * Consistently playful and inventive... We get the sense of a writer hitting a rich seam and mining it for all it's worth * TLS * Intricate, masterfully crafted and sprawling * The List * Mesmerising, provocative, deeply impressive * Spectator * Prismatic and brilliant * Vanity Fair * The most inventive and playful novel of the year... Lacey...is at her creative apex with Biography of X * Big Issue * An audacious novel of art and ideas set in an alternate late 20th century... This is brilliant * Publishers Weekly * Remarkable * Scotsman * Strange and dystopian and vividly imagined... Beneath the counterfactuals, and the glamour and squalor of Manhattan nightlife, and the mythologies bought and sold, she's telling a love story * New York Times * A tour-de-force * Library Journal *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 230 mm
Width: 153 mm
Thickness: 29 mm
Weight
627 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78378-927-6 (9781783789276)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Catherine Lacey is the author of the novels Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers and Pew, and the short story collection Certain American States. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award and a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship. She has been shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and was named one of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, The New York Times, The Believer and elsewhere. Born in Mississippi, she is based in Chicago.