Biography of X
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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.
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Let's first tackle the elephant in the room: is Biography of X sexist? Well, yes. Yes, it is. Largely in the same vein as early twentieth century science fiction tended to be overly simplistic and reductive in developing female characters, the large majority of male characters in this novel are two-dimensional hyperbolised caricatures, perfectly placed to carry the weight of blame and fault. And that's alright, I get it.
That out of the way, what Catherine Lacey does in this novel is nothing short of impressive, both in building an alternate history version of the US that some would consider too possible for comfort, and simultaneously digging through the emotional stack of a main character, exposing her strengths and weaknesses, fears and motivations, as she unravels the life's mysteries of her departed wife. Catherine does so with an elegance and simplicity of prose, and a sincerity of feeling that is uncommon in genre writing.
Biography of X aims to be a cautionary tale of geopolitical scale, but where it succeeds the most is at studying the complexity of human beings - the layers of motivation, drive, fear, hypocrisy, and fallacies that compose us; the walking, talking paradoxes that we are.
At that, it succeeds in spades.
A multilayered and ambitious book that explores the public persona and personal life of a fictional eccentric celebrity artist through the eyes of her widow, who knew little about her late wife's past. The worldbuilding isn't perfect, but it's not lacking to the point of distraction. The author did a marvelous job in constructing X's complex personality and her troubled relationships with the people But the depiction of X as a magnetic figure instantly impressing everyone she met, felt overly convoluted and unrealistic. Also, the book often seemed far too long, with sections devoted to either describing X's god complex or showing how everyone seemed to be in awe of her.
Great concept, but not without flaws.
3.75/5
Biography of X by Catherine Lacey is a fictional biography of a fictional woman who's life was so many fictions, but perhaps therein lies the truth. Set in an alternative version of the past, but maybe offering a chilling speculation about our present and future, the narrator sets out to write a biography of her late wife, the artist/writer known as X. Against the dystopian backdrop of a recently reunified US, the author goes on a quest citing numerous interviews and sources to unravel the complex and convoluted string of identities X had played throughout her life in an attempt to document her life...calling into question how well she had truly known her and even the nature of knowing another, and maybe even the self. This is a very literary book, much more so than my usual reading. I picked it up because of the dystopian elements found in the Southern Territories and Former Southern Territories, which reminded me of Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. These were my favorite parts of the book, even if some aspects of the execution did seem a bit heavy-handed. Otherwise I found the cast of characters and numerous complicated ideas throughout the text to be a bit confusing, though Lacey generally did a good job of grounding the abstract in the human.
