In short: Zelig x The Handmaid's Tale x Sebald

The Biography of X is itself a fictional object, the work of C.M. Lucca, widow of the renowned performance artist known as X. Lucca documents her attempt to find definite answers about X's mysterious origins, partly in order to the right the wrongs inflicted on her beloved's legacy by prior biographers, partly to make sense of her own life.

It has come to us from a parallel universe / alternate history where strong socialist influence on the New Deal and beyond led to the 1945 succession of the former Confederate states to form a theocratic state, the Southern Territories. X's fame and success brings her into contact with many luminaries of our own world, including David Bowie, Tom Waits and Connie Converse, all of their lives changed by the changes in the course of history.

There is little to fault in Lacey's prose, which makes Lucca's voice and interiority feel solid and real, and immerses you deeply into the world of the Southern Territories. It makes smart and nuanced points about regime change, culture war and the role of art in the privileged walls of the first world.

I feel the need to reiterate the obvious comparison to Sebald that has been made in reviews. The incorporation of images, which adds to the verisimilitude of this found biography is genuinely Sebaldian, in that is not used as a stylistic gimmick, but used to reflect on the nature of memory, both institutional and personal.

However, Lacey's eagerness to connect X's life to 'characters' from our world will shatter the immersion if you are familiar with any of these events. Two examples in my reading stuck with me. When discussing X's collaboration with David Bowie, he is noted to have worked with producer 'Brianna Eno' in Berlin. Later, Abbas Kiarostami's masterful Close-Up is referenced as an influence on X, but the events of the film are changed so that Kiarostami is the one undergoing impersonation rather than Moshan Makhmalbof. Why bother? Why make me believe that the world-historical changes at the foundation of your fictional world created the kind of minor changes you'd expect from a Rick and Morty parallel universe joke? This is the frivolous stuff; I suspect many readers will find the discussion of Jesse Jackson and Ronald Reagan's politics in this alternate history to be in very bad taste.

There is so much to love in this book, and if Lacey had resisted the occasional urge to show off her mental collection of pop culture ephemera and flippantly engage with the nature of alternate history, this would be an epochal masterpiece. A critic ensconced in the literary world with no connection to the pop culture or political history Lacey plays around with would love it unconditionally, other reads will have to find their own tolerance level.

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