The Möbius Book

"A singular, bewitching work about cycles of life and loss, the patterns of behavior that seem to lock us into who we are, and the quest for a faith that might break us free." -Hua Hsu, author of Stay True

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by Vulture and LitHub


A genre-bending story about breaking-both of the heart and form itself-from the author of Biography of X.

Note to the listener: This book was written in two parts, either of which can be listened to first, neither of which is the true start of the story. You have the option to skip ahead to the fiction half or start at the beginning with the nonfiction.

Adrift in the winter of 2021 after a sudden breakup and the ensuing depression, the novelist Catherine Lacey began cataloguing the wreckage of her life and the beauty of her friendships, a practice that eventually propagated fiction both entirely imagined and strangely true. Betrayed by the mercurial partner she had trusted with a shared mortgage and suddenly catapulted into the unknown, Lacey's appetite vanished completely, a visceral reminder of the teenage emaciation that came when she stopped believing in God. Through relationships, travel, reading, and memories of her religious fanaticism, Lacey charts the contours of faith's absence and reemergence. Bending form, she and her characters recall gnostic experiences with animals, close encounters with male anger, griefdriven lust, and the redemptive power of platonic love and narrative itself.

A hybrid work across fiction and nonfiction with no beginning or ending, The Möbius Book troubles the line between memory and fiction with an openhearted defense of faith's inherent danger.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

1146167694
The Möbius Book

"A singular, bewitching work about cycles of life and loss, the patterns of behavior that seem to lock us into who we are, and the quest for a faith that might break us free." -Hua Hsu, author of Stay True

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by Vulture and LitHub


A genre-bending story about breaking-both of the heart and form itself-from the author of Biography of X.

Note to the listener: This book was written in two parts, either of which can be listened to first, neither of which is the true start of the story. You have the option to skip ahead to the fiction half or start at the beginning with the nonfiction.

Adrift in the winter of 2021 after a sudden breakup and the ensuing depression, the novelist Catherine Lacey began cataloguing the wreckage of her life and the beauty of her friendships, a practice that eventually propagated fiction both entirely imagined and strangely true. Betrayed by the mercurial partner she had trusted with a shared mortgage and suddenly catapulted into the unknown, Lacey's appetite vanished completely, a visceral reminder of the teenage emaciation that came when she stopped believing in God. Through relationships, travel, reading, and memories of her religious fanaticism, Lacey charts the contours of faith's absence and reemergence. Bending form, she and her characters recall gnostic experiences with animals, close encounters with male anger, griefdriven lust, and the redemptive power of platonic love and narrative itself.

A hybrid work across fiction and nonfiction with no beginning or ending, The Möbius Book troubles the line between memory and fiction with an openhearted defense of faith's inherent danger.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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The Möbius Book

The Möbius Book

by Catherine Lacey

Narrated by Catherine Lacey, Gabra Zackman

Unabridged — 5 hours, 30 minutes

The Möbius Book

The Möbius Book

by Catherine Lacey

Narrated by Catherine Lacey, Gabra Zackman

Unabridged — 5 hours, 30 minutes

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Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

A lyrical blend of non-fiction and make-believe, this book begins with a fictional tale of reflection on relationships and ends with Lacey’s own memoir about the aftermath of her recent separation from her partner. Separate but intertwined, the two stories dance with grief, anger and the friendships that remain.

"A singular, bewitching work about cycles of life and loss, the patterns of behavior that seem to lock us into who we are, and the quest for a faith that might break us free." -Hua Hsu, author of Stay True

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2025 by Vulture and LitHub


A genre-bending story about breaking-both of the heart and form itself-from the author of Biography of X.

Note to the listener: This book was written in two parts, either of which can be listened to first, neither of which is the true start of the story. You have the option to skip ahead to the fiction half or start at the beginning with the nonfiction.

Adrift in the winter of 2021 after a sudden breakup and the ensuing depression, the novelist Catherine Lacey began cataloguing the wreckage of her life and the beauty of her friendships, a practice that eventually propagated fiction both entirely imagined and strangely true. Betrayed by the mercurial partner she had trusted with a shared mortgage and suddenly catapulted into the unknown, Lacey's appetite vanished completely, a visceral reminder of the teenage emaciation that came when she stopped believing in God. Through relationships, travel, reading, and memories of her religious fanaticism, Lacey charts the contours of faith's absence and reemergence. Bending form, she and her characters recall gnostic experiences with animals, close encounters with male anger, griefdriven lust, and the redemptive power of platonic love and narrative itself.

A hybrid work across fiction and nonfiction with no beginning or ending, The Möbius Book troubles the line between memory and fiction with an openhearted defense of faith's inherent danger.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.


Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Lacey isn’t scorching earth—she’s sifting it, flinging fistfuls of dirt and thought at us . . . mundane language pops out with new meaning in the fog of post-relationship grief . . . Lacey is imaginative and whimsical when considering reality, and sees truth in make-believe." —Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times

"Visceral, slippery . . . a brilliant exploration of faith (religious and otherwise), love of all kinds, sensuality and sexuality, eating disorders, experiencing the unknown, and the endless fluidity of being a human." —Keziah Weir, Vanity Fair

"Lacey is always doing something mysterious with form . . . Her latest novel is split down the middle, making it impossible to decide which half to begin with. Blending truth and fiction, the reader is in good hands no matter Lacey’s subject." —Jessica Ferri, Los Angeles Times

"Memoir collides with invention in a brilliant interrogation of art, faith and relationships . . . The Möbius Book is deeply serious and engrossingly playful, and it lavishly rewards serious, playful attention." —Sarah Moss, The Guardian

"Catherine Lacey continues to probe and puncture the membrane between what is real and what is imagined . . . curious and unique." —Jasmine Vojdani, Vulture

"As enticing and frustrating as its eponymous strip . . . exhilarating in its meticulous construction and literary flamboyance." —Rebecca Steinitz, The Boston Globe

"Every book Lacey writes is uniquely strange, but all of them investigate the slipperiness of storytelling . . . a project that makes you think deeply about how we construct stories to make sense of our lives. The goal is always to search rather than to settle." Johanna Thomas-Corr, The Times (UK)

"Catherine Lacey has been climbing up the literary ladder ever since her magnificent debut novel . . . this new one runs the emotional gamut." The Telegraph (London)

"The Möbius Book has no beginning or end but stresses the cycles that punctuate our lives, musing on memory and fiction and the centrality that faith—whatever form that may take—can have. With a heavy emotional thrust and a singular style, this book might resist easy definitions or categories but asks gnawing universal questions on intimacy, security and belief systems that are sure to enthrall many." —Nathan Smith, Observer (London)

"Is it a memoir or a novel or a little of both? Better to categorize Lacey’s latest as its own genre, a category-defining, creative, thought-provoking piece of literature on loss, betrayal, friendships, faith, and more . . .Unlike life, there is no beginning or end, just a story that follows its own strange, wild, and mesmerizing pattern. A sui generis work, like no other." Booklist (starred review)

"A genre-bending book that grapples with the diffuse and uncategorizable enormity of personal loss . . . There are no easy endings in this doubled book, just an infinity loop of questions and possibilities, a twinned bank of pay phones ringing in the night, waiting for someone to answer . . . A literary haunting that will burrow under your skin." Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“[The Mobius Book] expands the craft explored in [Biography of X] but offers a nakedness of spirit that few artists have explored as deftly as she does.” Library Journal (starred review)

"Novelist Lacey (Biography of X) reflects on love, faith, and loss in this ambitious genre-bender . . . her vulnerable search for answers and insertion of rhyming resonances across the two narratives excite. The author’s fans will be glad they took the plunge." ―Publishers Weekly

"A hybrid work of fiction and nonfiction, a genre-bending work that traces her relationship with her ex partner and with her former religious faith. Lacey’s work always surprises me and offers something totally new . . . sure to be striking and singular." LitHub

"Part novel, part memoir, what might have become a mere separation narrative in another’s hands instead interrogates through its own form whether anything begins or ends in the first place." —John H. Maher, The Millions

"As a massive fan of Lacey’s ambitious alternate-history novel Biography of X, I couldn’t be more thrilled that she’s following it up with something similarly audacious: a half-fictional, half-memoiristic meditation on her own breakup. Leave it to Lacey to put a tantalizing asterisk on her first foray into autobiography. —Conner Reed, Publishers Weekly

"A singular, bewitching work about cycles of life and loss, the patterns of behavior that seem to lock us into who we are, and the quest for a faith that might break us free." —Hua Hsu, author of Stay True

"Catherine Lacey's The Möbius Book is a brilliantly innovative memoir-cum-novel that unsettles and enthralls. When a relationship abruptly shatters, Lacey is left grappling with profound questions about intimacy, safety, and meaning. How well can we ever truly know another person? Can we ever fully know ourselves? As Lacey navigates a winding path of loss and self-discovery, she meditates on spirituality, the illusion of safety, the nature of art, and the transformative power of rupture; the result is a meditation of startling immediacy and depth." ―Meghan O'Rourke, author of The Invisible Kingdom

"A page-turner in both directions, The Möbius Book explores some of the most propulsive questions at the core of human intimacy: What remains unknown (indeed, often unknowable) at the core of the people we know best? And how do we survive this unknowing? This wry, surprising, nimble book—allergic to genre labels, and positively vibrating with insight—achieves what only great art can manage: to be both impossible to imagine, and utterly necessary. I was absolutely spellbound." ―Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2025-05-03
A genre-bending book that grapples with the diffuse and uncategorizable enormity of personal loss.

A woman wakes alone in her guest bedroom, grieving the dissolution of her marriage to an emotionally manipulative writer. A woman returns home to her apartment, spying a pool of blood creeping under the neighbor’s door. Each woman narrates one half of Lacey’s latest literary experiment, a recursive story told in two parts: a novella and a memoir entwined with one another. The effect is unsettling, like experiencing the lost memory of a book even as you turn its pages. “I felt I’d been shrunk down and shoved into a doll’s house, and I knew then—again, or for the first time—how grief expands as it constricts, how it turns a person into a toy version of herself,” Lacey writes in the opening page of the memoir section. The “toy version of herself” might be what Lacey transposes into the novella, about a woman confronting her role in the end of her marriage while growing ever more anxious about a possible murder next door. Then again, maybe not. “Ha ha, we said,yet again someone has confused the voice of a fictional character for an authorial statement of belief,” Lacey and her husband assure one another in the memoir. Across both sections of the book, Lacey offers meditations on faith, violence, friendship, and dislocation. With scalpellike precision, she teases out connections between her childhood experiences with loving and losing God and losing her faith in love as an adult. There are no easy endings in this doubled book, just an infinity loop of questions and possibilities, a twinned bank of pay phones ringing in the night, waiting for someone to answer.

A literary haunting that will burrow under your skin.

Product Details

BN ID: 2940191120515
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Publication date: 06/17/2025
Edition description: Unabridged
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