Biography of X

 Biography of X by Catherine Lacey, 416 pages.

X was a polarizing artist in varied mediums, a divisive critic and, above all else, a mystery. After she drops dead in her office, her widow CM throws herself wholly into writing her biography, despite her late wife's wishes. She is driven not only by the need to disprove an unauthorized biography that misunderstood her late wife, but by the need to finally understand the woman she deified after she was gone. Her research takes her through an alternate America that is recently reunified following the reabsorption of the Southern Territory, a fascist theocracy whose history CM finds herself deeply immersed in. Soon she finds, buried deep in a web of betrayals and lies, that her wife was both more and less than she ever could have believed.

I was totally engaged in this book the whole time I was reading it. It is an interesting case where many of the facts of the novel feel implausible, but also where it feels like that fact has absolutely no bearing on how well the novel accomplished what it was trying to do. I found this novel to be profound, with just enough plot outside of the prose and meditations to keep things a little exciting. I am also always a fan of a fictional novel that is committed to presenting itself as an in-universe piece of nonfiction, which I think this book pulls of quite well. I found this book in an Atlantic article of contenders for the title of the great American novel, and I would say this book deserves it's place on that list.