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. 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.

One of the reasons I wanted to participate in QWordy’s HRCYED 2.0 this year was to push myself to read titles I normally wouldn’t. Catherine Lacey’s Biography of X is definitely one that wasn’t on my radar and I’m honestly not sure what I thought of this book. I read it for the Award Season prompt; it made the 2024 Booktube Award list as an entrant.

The format is complex – it’s fiction masquerading as nonfiction/biography. At times it feels a bit like Zelig where X appears in important moments in the history of art, music and writing, but the book is also a speculative fiction where the USA has undergone a schism in which the Southern Territory separates from the Northern and Western Territories, and has been living behind a wall for almost 50 years. Now reunited, there is still a marked difference not only between the north/west and south, but also a difference with history as we know it. It’s a lot to keep straight.

To be honest, I didn’t really like any of the characters. And maybe that’s the point? The narrator (CM) is someone obviously adrift in life but her relationship with X is complicated and sometimes just downright nasty. The book contains themes about love and hate, art and writing, and it particularly investigates the idea of self. X changes personas throughout her life like a chameleon and we, the reader, seem to know her almost as little as her own wife does.

The book uses old photographs, 1st-person interviews, news articles, quotes and other “primary sources” to build the biography CM is writing, so it feels real even though you know it isn’t (and of course, the alternative US history keeps the reader grounded in that fact – this is fiction and not reality). Throughout the book, CM struggles to know who X is, but also struggles to know herself and I think that’s also one of the points of the book.

An odd, cryptic book – I’m on the fence still about whether I enjoyed it or not but I can appreciate the wordcrafting that went into it.

3 out of 5 star rating.