Biography of X

JESSICA FERRI, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

"...in its boldness of premise and execution, Biography of X goes above and beyond, under the river and through the woods. It flaunts world-building skills that the writers of HBO's Game of Thrones wish they'd had ... At first read, Lacey's dedication to the bizarro-world reality of this novel was irksome. I was more interested in her sentences...I found myself yearning for more of X and Lucca. I didn't care about the fact that X may have been a spy for the Northern Territory or that she had collaborated with David Bowie ... But the ending of this novel changed my thinking and confirmed that Lacey is one of the most fearless novelists writing today ... The climax of the book, what Lucca discovers, is not to be shared in this review. But it is the recognizable nightmare of anyone who has loved an art monster. More terrifying and tantalizing is the message such parallel worlds send to art monsters themselves. Lacey asks, what happens when we don't choose love?"