10 / 10
The Book of X follows Cassie, a girl who is born with her stomach literally twisted in a knot, from her childhood into her adult years. Cassie is raised on a meat farm, a piece of land with an enormous quarry where her father and brother work all day mining meat. Cassie’s overbearing mother spends her days obsessively cleaning the house and even more obsessively harping on Cassie’s appearance while pretending to ignore her own knotted stomach. More than anything Cassie wants to be like other girls her age, to be “normal.” So she finishes school and moves into the city, grateful to be away from her family and ready to navigate the world independently. Yet she continues to be inhibited by her physical deformity, always dreaming of a life without the knot and never content.
This novel is an incredible example of surrealism in current literary fiction. Etter blurs the line between the grotesque and real life, normative experiences. In one scene, the world appears as it should be, in the next it may as well be melting before your eyes like a Dali painting. The reader never knows what they might find upon turning the page – perhaps a river of thighs or a shop where one may have their jealousy physically excised like a tumour. Interwoven are scenes more traditional for a coming-of-age tale: disagreements between Cassie and her mother, bullying by peers at school, and the bonds of female friendship. Combined skilfully, these devices work as both symbolism and commentary on themes central to the female experience such as body image and beauty, acceptance and loss, identity and gender roles.
Merely scanning through the pages of The Book of X, it is immediately clear this book is different from any other. The structure is built upon tight prose that is sectioned off into small blocks, often less than a page each. This minimalist approach provides pieces of a puzzle that fall into place as the story progresses. Echoing how the content of the story distorts reality, the unconventional structure stretches the normal bounds of a novel by combining the main narrative with two other elements: visions of a different, dream-like reality and bulleted lists of facts relating back to the storyline.
Each of these unique choices made by Etter, along with the severe beauty and crippling pain of her writing, work together to create a singular emotional experience. This novel sustains an atmosphere of discomfort for the majority of its 279 pages. A feeling of being completely transfixed by something terrible, unable to look away. Etter has such a compelling way of communicating emotion that reading this novel becomes an immersive act. Without hesitation, I highly recommend The Book of X! It is one of the most visceral, mind-bending reading experiences I have had in a very long time.
Sarah Rose Etter has a B.A. in English from Pennsylvania State University and a M.F.A in Fiction from Rosemont College. She is the author of Tongue Party, winner of the Caketrain Press award. Her work has or will appear in numerous publications including The Cut, Electric Literature, and VICE. She co-founded the TireFire Reading Series and is a contributing editor at The Fanzine. Etter has been awarded multiple residences, including the Gullkistan Writing Residency in Iceland where she worked on The Book of X, her first novel.
The Book of X is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers as of July 16th 2019. My sincere thanks to Two Dollar Radio for the advance copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are my own.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
The Book of X tells the tale of Cassie, a girl born with her stomach twisted in the shape of a knot. From childhood with her parents on the family meat farm, to a desk job in the city, to finally experiencing love, she grapples with her body, men, and society, all the while imagining a softer world than the one she is in.
