Summary

The novel begins with an introduction to C.M. Lucca, the narrator and the widow of the titular X, who was a prominent artist. C.M. lives in New York and struggles to comprehend and accommodate the glut of information she learns about her dead wife after her passing.

Four years prior to X’s death, in 1992, C.M. meets with a man named Theodore Smith who is interested in writing a biography of X, and informs him that it is X’s explicit wish that no biographies be written about her work. After X dies in 1996, Smith publishes a biography of her anyway, and attempts to bring C.M. in on the project. She berates and insults him. According to C.M., Smith gets several facts wrong about X’s history; C.M. sets about writing her own biography of X...