The most avant-garde of avant-garde artists, named X, dies. X’s wife investigates her mysterious past and writes her biography and that’s the book you’re reading.
The Biography of X suffers from the disjointedness caused by being a biography even if it’s a fictional one. It starts out really strong, meanders a little in the last quarter and then absolutely floored me with the audacity of its last few chapters.
Spoilers for the end of the book:
The appendix. My GOD the appendix.
Using interviews/biographies of real artists and thinkers to create a large part of X’s life making it feel that much more real is a such a wild choice to make. It must have made writing the book way harder and in retrospect elevates it beyond what it would be otherwise. I was completely blown away by the appendix at the end of the book showing how much of the story I had just read was pulled from the lives of real people.
This mixing of fact and fiction reminded me a lot of Mona Awad’s work without all of the surrealism.