Few mysteries are as compelling as the life of a renegade artist prone to evasion, as Catherine Lacey (The Answers) thrillingly demonstrates in Biography of X. The conceit of this clever novel is that it's a 2005 biography that former crime reporter C.M. Lucca writes about X, her wife, who died in 1996. X was a visual artist, a record producer, a songwriter who worked with David Bowie and a novelist who adopted various pseudonyms. Lacey invents an alternative 20th century where, since 1945, the country has been divided into regions in conflict--mainly the Southern Territory, with its decades of "fascist theocracy," and the Northern Territory, where Emma Goldman, Franklin D. Roosevelt's chief of staff, led the fight for same-sex marriage. This dissension included violent acts, as when anarchists blew up a Southern Territory gun factory, an event in which X was involved.
When an unauthorized biography paints an inaccurate portrait of X, Lucca is determined to discover the truth. Most of the novel consists of interviews Lucca conducts with people who knew X, through which she uncovers facts that challenge the relationship she thought she and X shared. The technique of building a character through interviews has been done before, including in Citizen Kane and Heinrich Böll's Group Portrait with Lady, but Lacey has contributed a work of great originality, complete with footnotes, mock photos and more. The book is immense fun, and a commentary on the unreliability of biography, the nature of love and the perils of digging too deeply into a person's life. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer