The Book of X

Cassie was born with a knot in her stomach – not the metaphorical kind one gets from nerves, but a literal tangle tied in her midsection. She grows up on a farm where her parents’ main source of income is a ‘meat quarry’ from which her brother and father pull large chunks of meat to auction like precious stones. This novel, somewhere between absurdist, ecriture feminine, and bildungsroman, follows Cassie through her youth where her body others her, through her relationships with men, where she is both an object of fascination and disgust, and through adulthood where she battles to fill her days with something other than an empty bed and a mundane secretarial position.

The book is visceral and heavy, with a strong focus on bodies, discomfort, loneliness, and the pains of being woman and of being different. Once the reader adjusts to the style and plot oddities (written like a prose poem, the book at times feels like a series of vignettes with Cassie as the focus), they will be sure to find a poignant and emotionally complex book about growing older and the search for acceptance, love, and validation in a world that refuses to see you as anything but a broken body.