The Book of X

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.

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.

'I loved every page of this gorgeous, grotesque, heartbreaking novel.' — Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties

The Book of X traverses the mundane and the surreal—from grocery lists to blooming meat, menstrual blood to a jealousy removal shop—laying bare the absurdities of womanhood. A truly original writer, Etter continues to push the boundaries of her imagination...and ours.' — Melissa Broder, author of Death Valley

'Utterly unique and remarkable...Sarah Rose Etter takes the surreal and expertly shapes it into a portrait that is as beautiful and compelling as it is horrifying and unbearable...Etter brilliantly, viciously lays bare what it means to be a woman in the world, what it means to hurt, to need, to want, so much it consumes everything.' — Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist

'Insightful and incisive, this book cuts deep into the failing heart of the feminine mystique.' — Amelia Gray, author of Isadora

'Sarah Rose Etter is a visionary. Perfectly paced, structurally audacious, and endlessly inventive, The Book of X is our new Revelation.' — Scott McClanahan, author of The Sarah Book