Biography of X

"The book I’ve been jabbering about to anyone who will listen is Catherine Lacey’s new novel Biography of X , which is a tricksy, intriguing book comprising a faux biography set in a contemporary, but counterfactual United States. In it, the grieving widow of a renowned, controversial performance artist named ‘ X’— whose iconoclastic, identity-switching work echoes that of Cindy Sherman and Sophie Calle, among others—attempts to piece together her wife’s mysterious origins, and in doing so offers a glimpse into a reality in which the American South seceded under a theocratic regime in the wake of the Second World War . It’s at once moving and bewildering, and terribly clever—quite extraordinary. If you haven’t picked up a copy yet, now’s the moment. It’s the novel other novelists have been pressing into each others’ hands. Lorrie Moore ( Birds of America , Self-Help ) is best known for her masterful and often very funny short stories , but is also a talented novelist. Her new book I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home , billed as “a ghost story set in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries,” will be out in June. And Dennis Lehane ( Mystic River , Shutter Island ) returns with Small Mercies , a superior thriller set in 1970s Boston in the tense months that follow a ruling aimed at desegregating local schools . A missing white girl; a black man found dead—are these the sparks that will finally set the tinderbox alight?"