Welcome to Litsy!

There was a lot that I liked about this book: the alternative history of the US, the obsessive personalities, the slow revealing of X's secrets, and the exploration of the characteristics of “art“.

I'm surprised that this didn't make the Tournament of Books shortlist (but glad it was included in #LitsyToB24). It seems just the sort of book that makes for good ToB discussion.
@squirrelbrain @Megabooks @BarbaraBB

This fictional book about a widow looking into her wife‘s past reads like a true crime podcast. The middle dragged though and that kept it from becoming a love instead of a like. #LitsyTOB24

At first I found it pretentious and stilted but the story grew on me and I found myself curious to know what would happen next. Set in an alternate history America, the widow of X tries to unearth her (in)famous wife‘s history and learns secrets that make her question her relationship. Was she just another person to be used and subsequently discarded by X?

#LitsyToB24
#The52BookClub24 - grieving character
#pop24 - book about a writer

Excited to start this literary fiction about a woman who sets out to write a bio of her late wife and unearths secrets

A sure sign of spring coming from my audiowalk earlier today.

(This book started strong but now it‘s slowing down.)

#LitsyToB24 I am ambivalent about this one. I love books about art, Siri Hustvedt being the absolute master, yet in this book I didn‘t feel it. I could not feel the art and its meaning. Also I kind of hated X and her attitude toward the narrator, who let her get away with anything. And the book is way too long Yet I loved the language, the format, the notes and the dystopian context. I‘ll have to think about it a bit more. A light pick

⭐️⭐️⭐️ I liked this more than expected, but I expected to LOATHE it, so not a high bar. Woman (Pulitzer winning journalist, actually) goes on a quest to set things right after an unauthorized biography is published about her iconoclastic artist late wife and gets more than she bargained for/comes to terms with ways her wife was a jerk. Setting is in an alternate reality US. Very creative and great narration but too long. Read for #LitsyToB24

Biography of X is an eclectic mashup of alternative history, art culture, mixed media, and…. Is it love? Or obsession 🧐

C leaves husband for crazy ultra self-important artist X and when X dies, C takes off on a crusade to defend her relationship with X. She finds out much more than she can wrestle with. Does it matter?

I‘m actually quite impressed with what all the author does in telling this extraordinary story.

#ToB2023LongList #LitsyToB24

“I found several pages of handwritten notes, picking apart a single essay that the writer Elvia Wilk published in Future Looks Magazine just weeks before the retrospective opened.”

#NameDrop #TOBmoment 2020

Up next! I have had SO many books come off hold and I either missed the pickup date (my library charges $1 for this 😱) or I have checked it out only to toss it into the return bin on the way out of the building! I feel overwhelmed. Do tell me if this is not on our #ToB list?!? And I will chuck it to #maybesomedaybutnotnow status.

As many have already said, this #Tob24 longlister is way too long. It is still a pick because when it was at its best I was riveted by this story of a widow researching the life of her famously secretive artist wife to set the record straight after a posthumous biography is published without her consent. Set in an alternative history, the more she learns the more she realizes she doesn‘t know about her wife or their marriage.

A very non-fiction seeming novel, Biography of X is a fictional biography of the author, artist, and mystery of a woman known as X. Written by her wife, CM, after X‘s death the work spent on the biography uncovers much of the deceptions of their marriage. CM interviews many people from X‘s past and readers encounter an alternative history of the US, in which part of the nation is a theocracy, where X was born. Too long but thought provoking.

After her wife‘s, X, death and the publication of her biography, a biography with many inaccuracies and faults, our protagonist decides to find out more about her wife through interviews, starting with where she was born.

Somewhere our protagonist says: “Other people‘s memories of my wife had clouded my own by then, which perhaps had been the point all along - not to see her more clearly, but to understand I never knew her in full.”

A book within a book, a blending of fact & fiction, an alternate United States, cool photos and yet by the final 50 pages, I had enough😬 A mysterious artist known by the symbol “X” dies leaving her widowed wife to realize how little she really knew of the woman she was married to. When an unauthorized biography is released she sets out to set the record straight.
This leads her on a quest to discover who was X??? Super glad I went print!

What a fascinating read… 🧐

The X of the title is a mysterious shape-shifting artist / writer; when she dies her widow decides to write her biography.

I loved the dystopia; it felt really close, like it could really happen. I didn‘t love the portrayal of X, she felt a bit too good to be true, too good at everything to be ‘real‘, which detracted from other parts of the book.

Another book that would have made for great #camplitsy discussions.

^^p17 making fiction=sacred

Personhood, creative identity, control

P18 “‘A biography,‘ she wrote in a letter to her first wife, ‘would be an insult to the way I have chosen to live. It‘s not that I am a private person; I am not a person at all.‘”

P108 “It was a reminder of the enormous paradoxes in a religious worldview that holds as much dazed and romantic hope as it does fatalism”

180 “now I am busy, so busy, day and night, ruining my life.”

Novel as biography. Art of crafting persona, escaping the past, personal mythology. Grief. Worshipful love. Living with partner‘s hidden past, accepting & perhaps relishing mystery. Confidence or pretentiousness? Artist X feels manipulative & phony, not fascinating. Friends w/ persona crafters like Bowie, Kathy Acker, Tom Waits. Liz Gilbert describing Rayya Elias. Pulled me in, then lost me. Alternate history. Endnotes! Who tells your story? 2023

I have mixed feelings about this one. On one hand, Lacey has created a dystopia that is such a fantastic social commentary on our current moment that I want to shout it to the stars. On the other hand, she has made the character of X so extra that she speeds right past believability into eye rolling territory. I‘ll give it a pick for the brilliance of the dystopia, but it‘s a low pick.

Ahhh, the art world. It‘s very weird. Not sure whether I should be amused, horrified, or despairing for the soul of humanity here.

I may use this some day. “For ineffable reasons, I simply cannot.”

I love the way Lacey pulls in cultural reference points. Unlike this one, many are skewed due to the secession of the Southern Territories and the ensuing fascist theocracy. Horrifying thought, but quips like this are also making me laugh.

Absolutely loving this one. I read Pew last year, and X has many similar themes: the dystopian in the everyday, the societal need/demand to define and categorize people and what happens when an individual refuses to be defined, or defined in "suitable" categories. And the South secedes (and rejoins, eventually,) so there‘s that.
Thought provoking.

Little outing to Dead Ink Books today 😁 not at all influenced by Litsy, nope….

Idk, I have to set it down. Maybe if I pick up something else, I‘ll discover if it‘s me or the book or the season of life or the inability to concentrate hard enough to read this book. (Page 180/364 😩)

It is better to cut than to tear. —- X

I almost put this book down for good around p.55, but I‘m so glad I didn‘t. There‘s a really interesting embellished historical element that I wasn‘t expecting but am thoroughly enjoying.

Wow wow wow. The brilliance of Lacey‘s new novel really cannot be overstated. After finishing it I still feel immersed in the story, walking around in a fog. The bending of fact and fiction, both in the story and as a trait of X, the physical and psychological journey of her widow as she writes her book, the spine-tingling feeling of X being slowly revealed, to her and to us. Just wow. Could not recommend more highly.

This is a hard book to review because it is so unusual. It‘s going to be interesting to see if it keeps me thinking over time.
This is something of a “concept” book. Fiction written as in the style of non fiction which also reflects the characters skewing of reality. C, the widow of an avant- grade artist/author named X is researching her deceased wife. X tried on many personalities and disguises and it has always been unclear what was “real”. ⬇️

I didn‘t feel like writing reviews tonight, but I did stop by the library to pick up this eagerly anticipated book and saw some beautiful blossoms! So lucky to have a library in my neighborhood. 🤩

@Reggie is this on your TBR?

New bookmarks! I was reminded that we‘ll have a new Catherine Lacey soon (tagged, out March 21). I thought her previous novel, Pew, was very good so looking forward to it.