In what has quickly become one of my favourite novels of all time, Catherine Lacey’s Biography of X (Picador 2023) reveals a circuitous tale of a woman’s life and an alternate history of the United States that was consuming, compelling, and thrilling to read.
When a woman known only as X—a performance artist, author, and infamous social chameleon—died suddenly, her widow embarks on a grief-fueled quest to uncover the secrets and details of X’s life and origins. Structured as the official Biography of X written by our narrator CM, we follow in X’s footsteps alongside her. While X was a famous personality in the public eye, she kept the details of her life story secret and constantly shifting so that not even CM knew where she had been born and spent her early years. We follow CM all over the US and the world, tracing X’s life and a history of a fractured twentieth century world that is more connected to X’s origins than CM anticipates.
This novel surprised me in so many ways! The premise of the fictional biography—structured just like a real biography with CM as the author—is fascinating. I really encourage everyone to pick up a physical copy of this book so they can easily see just how carefully Lacey and the publisher have constructed this as a book by CM. It is innovative, convincing, and thorough. I did not expect this to also be an alternate history of the US, where many of the Southern states wall themselves off from the larger country post-World War II. Lacey imagines a complete world where the consequences of these events reverberate across time, all focused around the microcosm of X’s life, loves, and art. Biography of X felt like a nesting doll of a book—every page revealed another layer—and it was impossible to tell where X’s story was headed.
What also compelled me was the scant details of CM’s life. Biography of X automatically means that we are set up for the narrator to take a back seat, but the glimpses we get of CM and her origins, as well as her—sometimes all-consuming—obsession with X and her complex motivations for authoring the biography made her a compelling character in the way that all unreliable narrators are. I was delighted by this book. It seems like the kind of novel that all authors want to write: startling, seamless, and impactful. Reading it in 2025—two years after it came out—didn’t change how immediate and relevant it felt.
Biography of X is one of my favourite books of all time and it is one I will keep going back to. I highly recommend it!
Please add Biography of X to your TBR on Goodreads and follow Catherine Lacey on Instagram.
Content Warnings: violence, death, abuse, religious fanaticism.
Rachel Friars received her doctorate in English Literature Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada in 2024. Her current research centers on neo-Victorianism and lesbian literature and history. Her work has been published with journals such as Studies in the Novel, The Journal of Neo-Victorian Studies, Queer Studies in Media and Popular Culture, and The Palgrave Handbook of neo-Victorianism.
You can find Rachel on X @RachelMFriars or on Goodreads @Rachel Friars.
