Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - Confessions of the Fox

Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg 4/5 🦊s

This book is weird--part memoir, part unhinged rambling footnotes, part collective memory. It reimagines the life of famous Victorian thief, Jack Sheppard, as a transgender man, exploring the intersections of his identity with period-accurate racism, incarceration, destruction of land, government corruption, and colonialism. It is also a story-within-a-story: told in the footnotes of the memoir is the story of Dr. Voth, a transgender man and college professor, currently grappling with the loss of his love and his debilitating OCD, who imprints onto Jack and uses the footnotes as the pedestal for self-reflection and anti-academia rhetoric.

At the end of the novel, I can't say I understood everything. It is committed to its appearance as an authentic 18th century text, which means it is dense and difficult to parse. The footnotes only add to its difficulty: calling upon a vast array of knowledge from Marxism to queer theory. The plot too, often feels scattered: caught between a mysterious conspiracy of government corruption and Jack's unquestionable love for his partner. But, with all this, I still found myself thoroughly enjoying it. I could not predict where it would lead me, but I enjoyed the journey there.

Minus points for a lot of mentions of piss, even though it does (eventually) become plot relevant.

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caseythereader's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

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ninjamuse's review against another edition

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challenging slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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katiewhocanread's review against another edition

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challenging funny fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

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morelsupport's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I thought this would be a book about being a thief, but it was actually a book about transitioning (this is a highly simplified plot summary). I thought it was really interesting how it incorporated anti-capitalism and anti-racism and transness into the story, but I honestly didn't find it very engaging, and I wasn't tense at the points where I was supposed to be tense. The thing I enjoyed the most were the footnotes, and the way that the person who was reading these confessions was a character in the same way that the subjects of the confessions were characters. I also really liked the resources provided. However, I just honestly didn't find this that engaging, and it was very jarring when modern concepts of transness were inserted in this supposed firsthand source. I really wished that Jack's feats of thievery that got him famous were more prominent.

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carbs666's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Deeply researched and lovingly crafted, this book is like nothing I've ever read before. Confessions layered on top of confessions, the inherent queerness of the disobedient archive, funny and insightful and personal footnotes, unreliable and fantastical and multiplicitous narration, a utopia outside of time, an escape. It's good. You have to read it.

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laurajsmith's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional inspiring mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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octopus_farmer's review against another edition

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hopeful lighthearted mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I liked the conceit - in many ways this is what i wanted The Starless Sea to be. I was almost annoyed by the researcher at times but came around on him. I also loveddd how the footnotes and related readings are all real texts! However, there’s a fair amount of piss that at times is kinky.

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