“Biography X” – Book Discussion Club Meeting

We invite you to the February meeting of the Book Discussion Club.

📅 On Wednesday, February 25 at 6:00 PM we will talk about Catherine Lacey’s novel Biography X (tr. Katarzyna Makaruk).

The meeting will be moderated by Beata Prokopczuk-Daab.

Please reserve seats: ksiegarnia@czarne.com.pl.

We invite people who have read at least parts of the book, although we recommend reading the whole work.

About the book:

When X – a controversial artist, writer, performer – is found dead in her studio, her distraught widow sets out to reconstruct her enigmatic and secret-filled past. She thus writes the absolute biography of her deceased beloved.

A story emerges from which the portrait of a brilliant provocateur with many faces gradually appears: X – a rebel and escapee born in the Southern Territory of the United States, which after World War II became a fascist theocracy. X – a New York artist and provocateur who, by changing incarnations, enters the circle of the era’s most eminent figures – David Bowie and Tom Waits, Susan Sontag and Denis Johnson. X – an elusive muse, lover and seductress, as fervently adored as she was hated.

Although built like a biography – based on interviews, letters, quotes and photographs – X’s story is told from the intimate perspective of grief. And although the narrator knows that “it is impossible to see the whole monstrous truth about someone you are close to, because every thing becomes blurred if you lift it to your eyes,” she bravely uncovers successive layers of secrets piled up over the years about her deceased wife.

Catherine Lacey’s book is a well-constructed and engrossing novel: a tribute to the counterculture of the second half of the 20th century, and also a sharp reflection on creating one’s identity and the relationship between art and everyday life.

See you at Nowolipki!