Author(s): Sarah Rose Etter

Fiction

A surreal exploration of one woman's life and death against a landscape of meat, office desks, and bad menThe 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. Twining the drama of the everyday -school-age crushes, paying bills, the sickness of parents-with the surreal-rivers of thighs, men for sale, and fields of throats-Cassie's realities alternate to create a blurred, fantastic world of haunting beauty.