Biography of X by Catherine Lacey

There is an inherent danger in getting to know your loved ones, a perpetual risk of disappointment. And yet, for X’s wife, it is the only thing that makes sense.
In life, X was conventionally perceived as a sort of artistic genius, a multi-disciplined creative of considerably cultural significance for several decades. X was a fine artist, writer, singer/songwriter. And yet for all her outspokenness and strong opinions, she had managed to remain an enigma.
After her death, a biographer attempted to resolve the puzzle of X by publishing an account of her life. X’s widow, finding that account unacceptable, sets off to write her own story.
That’s the premise of the novel, and it alone would have been enough for a compelling narrative, but the author (showing off because she can, because she literally IS that good) also threw in some serious world building. Specially, she set her novel in an alternate US that had separated in two in 1945 and did not reunite until many decades later. The South had ceded and turned into the exact kind of nightmare one might expect: a backward, insular, oppressive ruinous place. The North progressed at a familiar pace.
X, we learn, was born in the southern territories and managed to get out. Since then, her entire life had been about reinvention, subterfuge, and new skins worn and shed.
Artistically, it made her fascinating. Personally, it made her a complicated mess. And yet, for her wife, she was … everything. A woman worth loving, a puzzle worth unraveling.
So this is the journey of solving the puzzle of X. Because in the end, perhaps people are only who they are as seen by their loved ones.
A mesmerizing read, albeit not an easy one. It’s stunningly written and exceptionally clever in its interweaving of real and imagined, but it’s rather dense and doesn’t have much by the way of conventionally likable characters. More than anything, it’s really interesting. And interesting is often wins over nice. For this reader, anyway. Overall, certainly worth a read and a great introduction to the new (to me) author). Thanks, Netgalley.