Emily Vance Brown

by Catherine Lacey

5/5

I LOVED this book. One of my top reads of 2026! I had only ever seen it in passing and hadn’t heard much about it, but now I’ve gathered that Biography of X is pretty popular, at least within a certain literary crowd. I bought my copy at a bookstore bar, and while I was sitting with my glass of wine reading it, three different people approached me to tell me how much they loved it. 

I almost always love an alternate history, and this one was original enough to stand on its own but also mimicked the division of Germany after World War 2 in such a way that I already had somewhat of a framework for comparing the Southern and Northern territories. As someone from the South now living in the North, I thought Lacey did an incredible job with her exploration of religion, fascism, and religious trauma in both regions. I also appreciated the representation of a lesbian relationship that is very, very far from idealistic, but whose toxicity is unrelated to their queerness. 

I don’t usually read Goodreads reviews for books before I write down my own thoughts, but on this rare occasion I did, and—yikes. I hope I never accidentally befriend any of the people who wrote the most popular negative reviews. You people are so boring! I’d thought one of the purposes of fiction was to allow us to suspend our disbelief, but everyone seems so hung up on the probability of the alternate history depicted in Biography of X that they refuse to let themselves be taken on the journey of C.M. Lucca (the fictional author of this biography, and X’s widowed wife).

Personally, I think, the more unbelievable the better! I guess I’ll take all the improbable, impossible stories so the Goodreads influencers don’t have to.