Biography of X
Books | Fiction / Literary
4
(166)
Catherine Lacey
Named one of the Ten Best Books of 2023 by Time (#1), Vulture, and Publishers Weekly, and one of the Best Books of 2023 by The New York Times, the New Yorker, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair, Esquire, the Chicago Tribune, Kirkus, Lit Hub, and Amazon. National Bestseller. Winner of the 2024 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction and the 2023 Brooklyn Library Prize, a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize, and longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.“A major novel, and a notably audacious one.” —Dwight Garner, The New York TimesFrom one of our fiercest stylists, a roaring epic chronicling the life, times, and secrets of a notorious artist.When X—an iconoclastic artist, writer, and polarizing shape-shifter—falls dead in her office, her widow, CM, wild with grief and refusing everyone’s good advice, hurls herself into writing a biography of the woman she deified. Though X was recognized as a crucial creative force of her era, she kept a tight grip on her life story. Not even CM knows where X was 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, and which finally, in the present day, is being forced into an uneasy reunification. A masterfully constructed literary adventure complete with original images assembled by X’s widow, Biography of X follows CM as she 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 Bowie and Waits to Sontag and Acker. At last, when she finally understands the scope of X’s defining artistic project, CM realizes her wife’s deceptions were far crueler than she imagined. Pulsing with suspense and intellect while blending nonfiction and fiction, Biography of X is a roaring epic that plumbs the depths of grief, art, and love. In her most ambitious novel yet, Catherine Lacey pushes her craft to its highest level, introducing us to an unforgettable character who, in her tantalizing mystery, shows us the fallibility of the stories we craft for ourselves.
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More Details:
Author
Catherine Lacey
Pages
416
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published Date
2023-03-21
ISBN
037460617X 9780374606176
Community ReviewsSee all
"My first thought upon finishing: Is truth always the right answer? Does it just seem heart shattering only when it has been consistently evaded and suppressed? This obsessive journey to the truth of X manages to pile on more subjective truths or performances of X with each person her widow speaks to. While there are likely few of us who deliberately obfuscate themselves to the degree X did, I’m sure this is (low level and not so dramatic) a completely normal phenomena. Stories are shared at funerals, illuminating an unknown facet of the person, maybe you’re dazzled and your heart is happy, maybe you’re dismayed and wondering why you never knew them this way. Humans are master adapters, X was a master manipulator on top of it, as a way to survive and gain security and love, whether we are aware of it or not, and whether it’s true or fallacious. A mystery unlikely to be solved. "
C
CaitVD
"I forced myself to read it, and in the end, I still didn't care about "X.""
Wilma Williams
"When an artist dies, their work lives on. It is immortalized and critiqued way after they die. But what if the artist was a person who has led a life of deception for decades? You would question whether they were really dead. This is the story of X. A larger than life persona who has had an effect on the culture at large. She and her wife exist in an America where Emma Goldman became a politician, the south seceded a second time from the union creating a Christian theocracy. With a Berlin Wall style partition along the mason Dixon line. The point is, X has lived so many lives yet she died just as any other human. Her wife, Charlotte Marie Lucca goes on a quest to correct the mistakes made the biographer who couldn’t take no for an answer. When she digs deep into her wife’s archives she begins to regret and resent her. At one point even mentioning that her deception was so deep that she didn’t care about exposing everything about her wife. Even going to lengths such as meeting her ex husband, son she left behind, interviewing ex wives, X’s strangely codependent best friend Oleg, and begins weaving a story of deception by a person who had no regard for anyone but herself. Even going so far as to hire people to stalk her and CM or creating an art piece with CM as the subject where she tracks their relationship. Biography of X is an unmasking of the enigmatic celebrity who will stop at nothing to make the lives around her some sort of art piece. Catherine Lacey keeps you holding on to the edge of your seat until the very end! This book is one of the best books I’ve read in a while!"
Finn Hughes
"Loved this. What a fascinating character study of a mysterious artist and her wife. I loved the journalistic narration and the winding journey through time. I enjoyed this so much I went through it slowly to make it last longer."
kelsey
"Logically poetic "
Victoria Cis
