Catherine Lacey's sixth work, The Möbius Book, is a lissome philosophical experiment that blurs the lines of (auto)fiction through its two narratives: a novelette about two brokenhearted friends facing an existential quandary and a brief memoir. Though fundamentally discrete, they are linked by the aftermath of a breakup and some repeated imagery--a pay phone, a crowbar, a broken teacup--as well as themes of memory, religion, and autonomy versus risk.
Marie spies a pool of blood outside a neighbor's door but, disbelieving her eyes, puts it out of her mind during her friend Edie's visit. Edie split from her partner three months ago; Marie's infidelity ended her marriage to a woman. The characters' stories unfold via conversation and cogitation, in the vein of a Rachel Cusk or Sheila Heti novel. A major element is Edie's mystical piety: she pondered becoming a nun and once, in Greece, communed with a dying street dog, engaging in an inscrutable dialogue with it. Meanwhile, the question of the blood niggles.
Turn the book over for the companion part, more straightforward but equally cerebral. It opens on Lacey (The Answers; Biography of X) in the guest room of her home in Chicago, in shock after her partner of six years, "The Reason," dumped her for another woman, over e-mail. She moves to California and rebuilds her life on friendship and casual sex. Autobiographical vignettes ponder fear, coincidence, the body, and male violence. Like Lacey's abusive father, The Reason had a history of physical aggression (not to mention gaslighting and fat-shaming), and "if you're raised with an angry man in your house, / there will always be an angry man in your house." Lacey also recalls illnesses and accidents, and traces how anorexia and loss of faith exploded her childhood religiosity. Inspired by the work of William Gass and Gillian Rose, she contrasts the protective value of constraint with the joy of freedom.
As in Ali Smith's How to Be Both, the two storylines meet in the middle. The title makes the intention explicit: for autofiction and memoir to form a continuous text. Placing fiction alongside fascinating truth draws an unsettling parallel between Marie's neighbor and The Reason. Some readers may find this dual approach to storytelling profound; others may pinpoint pretension. Nevertheless, this potentially divisive work is sure to lure fans of high-brow and mesmerizing writing by R.O. Kwon and Sarah Manguso. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck
Shelf Talker: Catherine Lacey's experimental breakup book blends elliptical autofiction and stylish memoir as it meditates on faith, memory, betrayal, and male violence.