A mix of fiction and memoir, this dual-book is a really interesting read. In one part, three friends relationship to one another and to two of their romantic partners implodes while someone is quite possibly lying dead in the next apartment over. In the other part. the author reflects on leaving what was in retrospect a horrifying relationship, but was one that she expected to last forever. In both parts, there are reflections on faith, sex, anorexia, friendship, romance, and life as a whole. It's really well-written and completely entrancing.

~ ARC provided by NetGalley ~

I came to this book via Catherine Lacey's fiction; however, "The Mobius Book" poses one of the most interesting blends of reality and fiction that I've ever read before. "The Mobius Book" has two parts that can be read in any order. My journey was through the memoir first and then the fictional section, which I found to be very revealing about the writing process. If done in the other order, I'm sure you'll have a totally other experience. Lacey details the dissolution of a relationship with an unnamed partner, called The Reason, who would gaslight and mistreat Lacey. On the fiction side, Lacey details a night between two friends who are exiting similar difficult relationships. I loved the ways in which Lacey's lived anecdotes appeared in the fictional side of the book, and it made the more atmospheric and ephemeral hallmarks of Lacey's writing feel even more grounded in reality. I highly recommend this book for creatives--it's a masterclass in how our lived experiences can shape and speak through the stories we tell.

When I tell you I am now OBSESSED w Catherine Lacey, I mean I immeiately went out and bought her entire backlist.

This is the most beautiful blend of memoir and fiction, and tbh what I wish all authors would do. Instead of leaving us hanging, picking thru their fiction for fact, Catherine leaves the facts right at our fingertips. (And DAMN they're wild facts. Fk JB.) Audio was a blastttt to go w, hearing the anger and fear and humor and sarcasm and (I'll stop here but you get the point) in her own voice was especially powerful.

I still haven't wrapped my mind around this completely. The blend of genres is so well done and her voice remains so consistent on each side that it was easy to get lost in the "story" either way—and in a sense that may be why I'm still feeling jumbled? To be clear, not a bad jumbled. Just...phew.
I can't recommend this enough to anyone who enjoys memoirs on motherhood, who enjoyed Clam Down by Anelise Chen, All Fours by Miranda July and/or the Abandoners by Begoña Gómez Urzaiz, transl. Lizzie Davis.

Thank you bunches to Catherine Lacey, FSG, Macmillan Audio & NetGalley for the ALC in exchange for my honest review.

After reading and enjoying Biography of X I was really intrigued to read The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey. I loved the unique writing structure of this book! It’s written in two parts; one nonfiction and one fiction which can be read either way with neither being the true start to the story. This book explores relationships, heartbreak, and faith. I think this is a book I want to read again as I read it starting with the nonfiction and I’m curious to read it starting with the fiction. I listened to the audiobook and the two narrators for each section, the author for the nonfiction and Gabra Zackman for the fiction were excellent. I love the format of the physical book as well!

This didn’t really come together as a full book for me. I love the unique concept, and I don’t know if it would have been different if I read the physical copy as opposed to the audio. The nonfiction part (at least the first half of it) was very raw and almost felt like you were experiencing the petty fallout (though who could blame her with everything that happened). After that, though, I kind of just lost the plot. I listened to a lot of it twice because I just didn’t know what was happening or what I was supposed to be taking away. In the end, it’s short and interesting, so I recommend giving it a shot. But I also don’t think it was for me.

The breakdown of self that happens after a toxic, narcissistic relationship and you don’t know who you are anymore. This book was painful and beautiful at the same time.

If you’re a fan of Leslie Jamison, I think you’ll like this. This was my first novel by Lacey and now I am going to read everything by her.

The Mobius Book by Catherine Lacey is an interesting exercise in form for memoir. I do feel like this form of the book being split into two parts, fiction and nonfiction, gave Lacey the space to examine and re-examine her life. Specifically, the relationship she is dedicates most of the book to unraveling. However, for the reader it felt repetitive and like I had already heard the story. I didn’t get enough of a new angle to think it worth repeating. I will credit the creative swing in form but overall the book did not work for me.

Listening to The Möbius Book in Catherine Lacey’s own voice was an intimate experience. Catherine Lacey weaves fiction and memoir into a looping narrative that blurs the lines between truth and storytelling. The first half is a moody, atmospheric fiction about two women mourning lost love. At the same time, the second is a searing personal account of Lacey’s breakup with a manipulative partner. Her reflections on grief, gaslighting, and lost faith are intense, but always compelling. The Möbius structure brilliantly mirrors the cyclical nature of trauma and healing. It’s vulnerable, self-interrogating, and formally daring, a literary gut punch that left me unsettled, impressed, and deeply moved.

Since Lacey sets The Möbius Book as the reader’s choice, I started in part B. In this half, the author recalls her relationship with her then-romantic partner, The Reason. She punctuates this section with her unravelling Christian faith, simultaneously assessing how the religion her exacting father raised her in, à la the Methodist perfectionist tradition, and The Reason over promise. She places her faith in both because they offer a lens to understand the world, a sense of safety, and love. In the end, The Reason and her religious belief hollow her out.

Lacey sets part A in an apartment. There, Marie and Edie dialogue over ideas central to romantic relationships and marriage, such as giving oneself through built trust and the process of healing in order to trust and love again. This didactic section was not as interesting as part B; I expected Lacey to craft a fictitious section with movement as we encountered in Biography of X. I don’t so much mind the experimental “let’s not create an ending” angle because endings are difficult and middles are easy. However, this narrative möbius strip “that resist[s] . . . completion” is not as balanced in the mortaring together as I hoped. For this reason, I rate The Möbius Book 2.5 stars. I wonder if reading A before B would have mitigated this.

Conversely, the unflinching divorce memoir worked for me. I understood her choice to marry her past confidence in her religion and partner, both of which offered certainty in their respective ways. Yet she abruptly reaches a moment when the known facts become untrue, and the only way forward is to discover better facts. Her church teaches a works-based salvation that harshly shames the unpolished sinner and lacks an assurance of saving grace; The Reason manipulates, gaslights, and deems his narcissism as love. She recognizes her wrongly placed trust. The unrestrained content in this section, written in Lacey’s restrained, somber tone, paired well.

My thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for an ARC. I shared this review on GoodReads on June 16, 2025 (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7638710124).

This audiobook starts off by warning that it's missing a significant amount of the book's complexity (it certainly didn't play with form in the same way, with the two halves of the book being read in both directions). The runtime is pretty short, which makes me wonder about whether any content was left out, too.
As for plot, the book is divided into nonfiction (read by the author); the story of Lacey's breakup with The Reason and subsequent reflections on relationships and religion. The second half, with a new reader, is fiction about a couple of friends and a crime that happens next door.
Both readers were good - it was easy to listen to and I appreciated the differentiation between the parts of the book. In audio - again, maybe because it's missing something essential from the print - was somewhat hard to make a lot of sense of. I feel like there's some experimental, thought provoking stuff here, but I think it would all be easier for me to mull over in a physical format where the form clearly matters.
Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the arc!

Thanks to NetGalley & Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the ARC!

Catherine Lacey’s The Möbius Book is a well-written but frustratingly hollow journey through the dissolution of a relationship.

The titular hook sets up a conversation between the book’s two halves—what begins in fiction continues in memoir; what begins in memoir is refined in fiction. Readers are free to start where they like and allow it to shape their interpretation. Unfortunately, it never feels like more than a gimmick because the two parts are thematically redundant. I started with the memoir in the audiobook and found the novella to be a retread, albeit with less momentum. There’s a chance that the experience is different if one is physically holding the book.

I am doubtful.

Lacey’s non-fiction is difficult to engage with. In many ways, it’s alchemical perfection—we’ve got Simone Weil and Maggie Nelson and Thomas Merton and angst about spirituality and sexuality. Those ingredients, however, don’t drive the author to look beyond herself, which makes the book feel like little more than a graduate student milking a breakup for a writing workshop. To be fair, Lacey is in the exceptionally difficult position of writing about another well-regarded public figure, but she says either too much or too little. It’s not a reviewer’s place to morally evaluate an author or their characters, but this memoir is unwilling to interrogate itself, and interiority without accountability is just insularity.

It’s hard to say who the book is for, but it’s easy to say who it’s against.

Similarly, the fictional component of The Möbius Book is tedious and inessential. Without the interesting-but-esoteric stylings of the other half, it offers nothing of much substance. This is writing that has lines like, “Let’s not confuse being afraid with being fearful,” and that sort of Tumblr-level faux depth feels antithetical to whatever Lacey is trying to do.

I wish I loved the whole of The Möbius Book the way I did in the first few pages, but if Catherine Lacey taught me anything, it’s that some relationships just aren’t worth it.

I've never read anything like this before and I doubt I ever will. Such a unique reading experience that I think will actually work for most readers.