The first book in quite a while that I had to read in a single day because I couldn't pull myself away - a riveting hybrid-form text about the dissolution of a relationship and the clarity only gained in its wake. Love Lacey on a sentence level as well, just masterful work.

I absolutely loved this book. There are two parts to it which I didn’t know going into it and I was a little confused. Part 1 is a fictional short story and Part 2 is a memoir and I especially loved part 2 but feel like I kept thinking back on the opening story as I was reading the second part which was cool.

This was my first intro to Catherine Lacey and I’m so impressed. I was writing down so many beautiful quotes and thoughts and loved the pace of her storytelling, pretty amorphous but as you look back there is an obvious through line. Themes of heartbreak, grief, religious upbringings and lingering spiritual inclinations - all of which felt so relatable to me. That liminal space between letting go of everything you know without knowing what comes next. And leaning on others while you find your shape!

“Haven’t you ever tried to love or take care of someone despite being given ample reason that they cannot or do not want to receive your love or care? A faith it could go differently. An amnesia of how it’s gone.

Haroula thought for a moment, very still, then handed me a a half orb of orange. No, she said. Why would I do that?

Ah. Yes. A good question, I thought, a better question than mine.”

“It seems that optimism is free and pessimism costs you something.”

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC of this book!

Really enjoyed this, but not quite as much as I hoped I would. I was intrigued by the premise – "a hybrid work across fiction and nonfiction with no beginning or ending" – and based on Lacey's other experiments with form in Biography of X, I was excited to see what she'd bring to the table with this one. To that end, I was somewhat disappointed. I appreciated the interconnectedness of Book A and Book B, and I already feel due for a re-read of the first half to pick up on more of those echoing details. But I didn't find Book B, the memoir/autofiction piece, to be particularly structurally innovative in the ways I expected. I do wonder if I'd feel differently holding a paper copy rather than a digital one, and I'm curious if there's an element of Lacey's supposed experimental form that is better captured in the material layout of a printed book.

To Lacey's credit, The Mobius Book was beautiful and reflective and alluringly gossipy and full of musings on faith that hit really hard, but I just don't think I'd describe the book overall to be quite as genre-bending as intended.

A phenomenal read regardless, and I'm very grateful to NetGalley for the ARC.

My favorite new book so far this year! Lacey is just a genius. Her work is again very complex but compulsively readable. I found something to underline every other page, and I'm not even much of an annotator. Can't wait for this one to come out.

CATHERINE LACEY HAS DONE IT AGAIN.

I was waiting for her to drop a memoir... all of her books have the feeling of one, in some small way, so this feels natural. I appreciate and am inspired so much by her ability to be contemplative and emotional and intelligent in a way that is so engaging and I continue wanting more. I value and love her attentiveness to emotion.

Forever a Catherine Lacey fan.

This is a memoir but I honestly forget when I picked it up. Then I was very confused. Then I remembered it was a memoir. It read like an out of body experience and if you're looking for a classic memoir then this probably isn't for you. BUT if you're me and like this kind of thing then you're in for a treat. It feels like she's secretly (but also very publicly via a published book) calling out her abusive ex without saying his name, though I feel like it'd be pretty easy to identify who he is, I haven't tried tbh. I do think it's interesting that she referred to him as "The Reason" the entire time; aside from keeping him anonymous isn't that giving him a little too much credit - positive or negative. If he was "The Reason" then what would she name herself?

There are two parts to this book and after you read through both of them you can tell why she's gone with the Möbius theme here: where does one end and the next begin? Where does her fiction come from? Does life imitate art or does art imitate life?

I think this one'll stick with me for a bit. Also it's pretty weird to read a page in a book that references a tattoo of cicada on a forearm who you have a tattoo of a cicada on your forearm

"We were looking for endings, but all we could find was more middle".

The Mobius Book is one of the most bizarre things I've ever read. It's completely absorbing and totally defies rating or classification. A hybrid of fiction and nonfiction, it loops and folds back on itself, mirroring the relentless human experience of constantly searching for meaning in a world that refuses to offer any. Lacey captures this existential ache with such poignance, tracing the contours of faith-- its loss, its presence, and its quiet and persistent return -- in a way I've never read before.

There's a lot to love about this book, but my favorite thing is that it is one of the most beautiful descriptions of finding and losing one's faith that I've ever read outside of a religious text. Not just faith in God (but that's there too), but faith in love, faith in certainty, and in the stories we tell ourselves.

I have no idea how to categorize this book, and I think that's probably the point. Just like love and faith, this book refuses to be pinned down. If there is any justice in the literary world, The Mobius Book should launch Catherine Lacey into the absolute stratosphere.

Wowwwwee! Catherine Lacey does it again. This book is divided into two sections, one fictional, following a woman spending a night with her good friend after they have both gone through tumultuous breakups, and the other story following Lacey after an unexpected breakup. The first story feels pretty dark and uncertain while the second part of the book feels a bit more inquisitive and hopeful. I found the second half of the book more intriguing through the beautifully introspective journey of how Lacey was able to get through her break up. We see all the deep connections she has with her many friends. I think this book would be great for anyone going through a breakup.

This is a striking book by Lacey that takes two different narrative approaches to a central story of loss, grief and anger: on one side is a fictional piece involving two female friends who are both experiencing bad break-ups; on the other is a memoir from 'Lacey' (and I put that in brackets because as soon as one starts writing, there is always a distance between author and self, whether acknowledged or not, as experience is transmuted into story) based on her breakup with fellow author [author:Jesse Ball|285976].

The two narratives touch points around thematics but also with motifs, notably a crow-bar left behind in an apartment by a previous owner. These are angry female voices and the 'memoir' section recalls recent similar books by Rachel Cusk ([book:Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation|41086889] and Sarah Manguso ([book:Liars|200546858]) which negotiate their own relations between fiction and auto/biography.

There is something voyeuristic about the second half as we hear of The Reason's (the rather cutesy and capitalised term throughout for the narrator's ex-lover) violence and patriarchal sense of 'knowing' what the narrator thinks and feels better than she does herself, though she owns her own vulnerability and complicity with this dynamic. Toxic relationships seem to have much in common.

Lacey uses an extended conceit of loss of religious faith to figure the loss of a central love relationship, a metaphor which didn't really work for me. But with touches on her disturbed relationship with food (I was particularly incensed at the scene where The Reason points out she's put on three pounds and organises her eating and exercise schedule till this tiny amount of weight is lost) and the diverse, artistic milieu in which she moves and which nurtures her, there a grounding to the emotional heart.

There's a sense of watching how the raw material of the second section is transmuted into fiction in the first, making the two parts interchangeable and co-located, hence the Mobius strip - but their impetus was different for me as a reader. It's unavoidable, that sense of voyeurism in the second; but I was most struck by the imagery of the first, notably that haunting visual of the pool of blood seeping under the door of the neighbouring apartment: emotional life is dangerous, lethal and yes, bloody, this seems to assert.

If you've read Biography of X, you already know that Catherine Lacey loves to experiment with literary form. The Möbius Book is yet another ambitious and inventive work, structured like a Möbius strip without a definitive beginning or end. The book is divided into two distinct yet connected sections: one fictional, the other nonfictional.

The fictional portion is a haunting and compelling short story about two women navigating the aftermath of their respective breakups. Its eerie undertones are made even spookier by Lacey’s revelation at the start of the nonfiction section: “Nearly every time I've written a novel, something happens between its completion and publication that makes it clear to me that I knew something I didn't know I knew while I was writing. That buried knowledge, that unknown known, had been expressed in the fiction, just beyond my awareness.”

The nonfiction section originated after Lacey’s tumultuous six-year relationship ended in an abrupt and impersonal email—sent from another room in their shared home. As her life unravels, she reflects on the collapse of her faith in God during her childhood and its unsettling parallels to her present experience.

I found this book deeply absorbing and am incredibly grateful to NetGalley and FSG for the advance copy. The Möbius Book will be released this June, and I highly recommend it.

Sometimes a book comes along that feels deeper and more true than the words it's written with. I felt that about this book, this barbaric yawp of a book. The rage, the reckless rage, the self-destructive rage, the impotent rage because the man you're enraged with is smugly safe in his perception of the world and it's a perception that has already discounted you, has always discounted you, has already and always thought of you as an extension of his own self. To learn that you were always a mirror and no more. The funhouse, the horror, of seeing that truth, after thinking for years that you were seen. That you were loved. The language and the meanings shattered inside me as I read. I felt it deeply, as something true. A recognition.

The first part is a short story about two friends who discuss the recent end of their relationships in an apartment that might have had a murder take place next door. The story discusses the philosophy of love and faith.

The second half of the book is nonfiction writing that is similarly philosophical in its analysis of Lacey’s breakup with her partner of six years. Lacey reflects on the relationship and its connection to her religious experiences, as well as other events in her life. I really enjoyed Lacey’s reflections and seeing the connections between her nonfiction and the auto-fiction from the beginning of book. I found Lacey’s reflections on her work as a fiction writer the most interesting. Particularly when she discusses her relationship with sex and sex scenes in writing, and the merits of including sex in fiction.

I think this book would be great for anyone who is or has had to process the ending of long relationship, or is evaluating the role that religion has played in their life and their understanding of love. Readers of Lacey’s other works will especially enjoy this book.

As a full disclosure and reflection, I don’t believe I’m the target audience for this novel. However, I do believe there is an audience for this novel that will appreciate the unique style and creativity of this intensely literary, genre-bending story.

For context, the story is divided into two parts: Part A, a fictional tale of two friends rehashing their failed relationships. Part B is a bleaker, auto-fictional narrative of Lacey’s own separation.

Objectively, I appreciated Lacey’s writing and the creativity of the “Mobius Strip” concept woven into the story. The prose in Part A was sharp and atmospheric with cutting dialogue that was easy to engage with. I found Part B a bit less engaging and harder to follow with a less linear narrative. The story in its entirety explores many heavy topics, including faith and spirituality, relationship collapse, an eating disorder, and anger/abuse. Throughout the narrative, each part vaguely alludes to elements of the other, illustrating interconnectedness, and the lack of beginning/end (ie, the Mobius strip).

For me, the concepts were a bit too cerebral and I found myself frequently distracted while reading; however, I believe this was more due to my personal interests rather than the strength of the narrative itself.

Overall, I would recommend the Mobius strip for its atmospheric prose and creativity. If you enjoy unique literature and don’t mind a bleak story without a resolution, your personal preferences may align better than my own.

What do the last 5 years feel like? Well according to Catherine Lacey it feels like being closed into a ratty apartment, seeing your friend realise you have completely come undone. Was there blood seeping under the door of the next apartment over? That can't have been blood, right? Right?

I loved this. Smart, thoughtful, revealing an underlying confidence and clarity of purpose I was moved and thrilled by. It took me places I really didn't expect to go. A special entry in the category of recent literary breakup memoirs.

A book with two parts, with the first section being almost a play between two female friends discussing their failed relationships and the second section an autobiography of the author's separation from her partner
Will there be no end to your assumptions of what I want? I asked him, then I answered my own question: There will be no end to your assumptions about what I want.
We, both of us, we had hallucinated the other.

In The Möbius Book we initially find ourselves in a seedy apartment in New York, where Marie and Edie, two good friends, meet each other after painful break-ups. Edie is recovering from an uneven relationship with a month in Greece and sex with unnamed men met in parks, and Marie is mourning a marriage with her wife which broke down, preventing her to see her two children, meet around Christmas. And then there is not present K. a decades old friend of Marie who told about her relationship with Helena to her wife, coincidentally also their sister. Also there is a substance which seems to be blood trickling out from under the door of their neighbour. I found this part A of the book very well done and atmospheric, with dialogues that I could easily see acted out on stage.

Part B is very much autofiction and relates how Catherine Lacey comes to term with "The Reason" breaking up with her per email (I am speaking in this letter about the dissolution of our relationship as partners ) and making her sleep in the guest room of their shared house.
The Reason is Jesse Ball, with sentences of his Autoportrait being literally quoted. The author also reflects on violent father, now incapacitated by a stroke, and how this has guided her choices in relationships and love. There are obviously a lot of echoes in Part A that derive from the events from Part B, including a lot of spiritual questions which in Part A centred around a dying dog in Athens and in the second part of the book more overtly to the Christian upbringing of the author, including how this induced her to not eating. There is a lot of crying in this section of the book, in public places (Manhattan is and has always been the best place I’ve known to cry in plain sight, so I did a good deal of that, too), in parks, during diners and during calls.
Leaving an earlier husband called Peter is barely reflected upon, there is a section about a friend called Sean losing his eye sight is so touching and tender, I would have liked more of that, but overall section B is about the gaslighting by Ball as perceived by Lacey during their relationship, exemplified in sentences like: If I had really been paying attention to him, he explained, if I had really loved him, then I would have known how dire the situation was. How had I not read his mind?

This feels very raw, and obviously this is autofiction plus I don't know any of the people in the book, but the resulting picture is far from pretty, including breaking of a hand when smashing into the wall (I had checked my phone during a film he had wanted me to watch - that was why he’d punched the wall), remarks on gaining 3 pounds and mansplaining taken to the max (It wasn’t that he didn’t love me, he explained. It was that it had become clear to him that I didn’t love him anymore. This isn’t what I want so much as it is what you want, he told me, and when I said it wasn’t what I wanted he simply said yes, it was)..

Somatic therapy and energy healers, an exorcism of a demon from a right leg and a spiritual surgery, extracting a diseased soul, aided by Jesus and Lao-tzu and some bondage plus the best sex of her life with men she doesn't know seemingly offer a runway to healing. The last pages of the book have a relationship blossoming with a Spanish speaking Daniel whom per Wikipedia she married in 2024.

While the echoes of part A and part B are interesting, I felt slightly uncomfortable with what part B makes us as readers experience in almost a voyeuristic manner. As said, it feels very raw and personal, almost like a literary exorcism of sorts. Lacey her writing is impeccable, quotes below, but I think I would have enjoyed the book more if Part B was either less rooted in real life or had showed detachment and an analytical eye similar to what Annie Ernaux applies to events in her life.

Quotes:
Book A
She sometimes had the feeling she was something he had saved and therefore owned.

Marie knows that harming someone is the fastest way to become permanent in them.

You’ve always loved difficult things, Marie says, deep breath now, talking about Edie, but just as well talking about herself.

In love you place your life in another’s hands, and you dare them to ruin it.

She gave herself up without tension into friendship, respected her friends enough to allow them to change her.

A relationship is an act of faith - it’s a kind of magic or experiment, isn’t it?

Humans have needs and when their needs are met, sometimes they call it love.

There is no story that does not lead to another story

Book B
The more I tries to explain what had occurred, the more it felt like nothing had occurred.

Without God, what was a body? Just a place to wait.

You can’t argue with it, can’t argue with your life.

Cities permit a certain amount of suffering in plain view as part of the etiquette of proximity, the privacies we afford each other in order to bear the burden of human density.

We know more about how to attempt to survive an aerial disaster than we know about meeting the end of love, the former being highly unlikely while the latter is close to certain.

How could you be Christian and not think of death all the time?

Part of what terrified me about the idea of loving another person again was how easy it has been for me to misdiagnose abject mistreatment as simply misexpressed love.

Really compelling examination of fictionality and wavering faith in romantic and religious relationships. Loved the half-fiction half-essay/memoir form, which acknowledges the one-sidedness of personal stories. If you like books that are conversational and frank about an author's real-life experiences and concerns, and have at least half an appetite for experimental forms—I promise, it's more surprising than confusing—this will do it for you! I see it in conversation with Sarah Manguso's LIARS (I think it transposes a scene from that book into this one, actually) and Nicolette Polek's BITTER WATER OPERA.

An extraordinary examination of how facts from a writer's life enter their fiction, but not without being displaced and transformed. But it is also a careful study of the break-up of a relationship and the break-down of the narratives (the fictions) we tell ourselves. Responding to and attempting to go beyond the vogueish autofictional novels of the 2020s, Lacey continues, in a new mode, her rigorous and playful investigation into the nature and possibility of narrative itself that she undertook to such acclaim in Biography of X.

Though I have long wanted to read Pew, and Biography of X is patiently waiting on my Kindle, this is actually my first Catherine Lacey book. I think (and I really hope) that this is a different direction for her.

The Möbius Book is marketed as a blend of memoir and fiction, this is lost on me as I know nothing of Lacey's life and even the biographical part reads like fiction. The first section appears to be a fictionalised version of real events, while the second part seems to be a loose memoir giving a little more context to the story. Not having realised it was a book of two parts, I was surprised to find the acknowledgements about halfway through, will the physical book start from the back and the front perhaps? That would definitely fit the Möbius idea.

The positive for me was that this is a short book, which I managed to read quickly. Aside from that, it just wasn't for me. Read it if you enjoy the more experimental side of literature.

Finally, the cover is terrible. It looks amateur and I would not pick it up in a bookshop or library.

Not for me, but thanks anyway, NetGalley!

The first 40% of this book is a high brow experimental fiction/mystery where there is an infidelity, and a bloody door, and it is unclear whether the memoir has begun. Overall, it was confusing, well written but in true Lacey fashion verbose (mommy negative).

Afterwards, there is acknowledgments, and a clear transition into the true memoir which is a statement about her abusive relationship with a fellow author who broke up with her via email (huh!?) and how she literally had to do an exorcism to get rid of his spirit. I just overall found myself a little bit confused at times and found that this would’ve been less confusing with a little bit of formatting and chapter layout.