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Confessions of the Fox
Set in the eighteenth century London underworld, this bawdy, genre-bending novel reimagines the life of thief and jailbreaker Jack Sheppard to tell a profound story about gender, love, and liberation.
Recently jilted and increasingly unhinged, Dr. Voth throws himself into his work, obsessively researching the life of Jack Sheppard, a legendary eighteenth century thief. No one knows Jack’s true story—his confessions have never been found. That is, until Dr. Voth discovers a mysterious stack of papers titled Confessions of the Fox.
Dated 1724, the manuscript tells the story of an orphan named P. Sold into servitude at twelve, P struggles for years with her desire to live as “Jack.” When P falls dizzyingly in love with Bess, a sex worker looking for freedom of her own, P begins to imagine a different life. Bess brings P into the London underworld where scamps and rogues clash with London’s newly established police force, queer subcultures thrive, and ominous threats of an oncoming plague abound. At last, P becomes Jack Sheppard, one of the most notorious—and most wanted—thieves in history.
Back in the present, Dr. Voth works feverishly day and night to authenticate the manuscript. But he’s not the only one who wants Jack’s story—and some people will do whatever it takes to get it. As both Jack and Voth are drawn into corruption and conspiracy, it becomes clear that their fates are intertwined—and only a miracle will save them both.
An imaginative retelling of Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, Confessions of the Fox blends high-spirited adventure, subversive history, and provocative wit to animate forgotten histories and the extraordinary characters hidden within.
Recently jilted and increasingly unhinged, Dr. Voth throws himself into his work, obsessively researching the life of Jack Sheppard, a legendary eighteenth century thief. No one knows Jack’s true story—his confessions have never been found. That is, until Dr. Voth discovers a mysterious stack of papers titled Confessions of the Fox.
Dated 1724, the manuscript tells the story of an orphan named P. Sold into servitude at twelve, P struggles for years with her desire to live as “Jack.” When P falls dizzyingly in love with Bess, a sex worker looking for freedom of her own, P begins to imagine a different life. Bess brings P into the London underworld where scamps and rogues clash with London’s newly established police force, queer subcultures thrive, and ominous threats of an oncoming plague abound. At last, P becomes Jack Sheppard, one of the most notorious—and most wanted—thieves in history.
Back in the present, Dr. Voth works feverishly day and night to authenticate the manuscript. But he’s not the only one who wants Jack’s story—and some people will do whatever it takes to get it. As both Jack and Voth are drawn into corruption and conspiracy, it becomes clear that their fates are intertwined—and only a miracle will save them both.
An imaginative retelling of Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, Confessions of the Fox blends high-spirited adventure, subversive history, and provocative wit to animate forgotten histories and the extraordinary characters hidden within.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published June 26, 2018
520 people are currently reading
13864 people want to read
About the author
Jordy Rosenberg
5 books272 followersJordy Rosenberg is a Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His novel, Confessions of the Fox, was published in 2018 by Random House US/Canada, Allen and Unwin AUS/NZ, and Atlantic Books UK. In 2021 Paseka published Confessions in Czech. A new novel, Night Night Fawn, is forthcoming from Random House/One World in 2026.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 910 reviews
May 18, 2018
Historical fiction tends to be very cis, straight, and white. There are a few authors out there intent on changing that and Jordy Rosenberg's new novel is one of the most ambitious ones yet. It was pitched to me as Sarah Waters meets Vladimir Nabokov and I was like, "Sign me the hell up!" and it's a surprisingly good pitch. The story is from a discovered manuscript, full of thievery and action and lots of sex; and there is also a Pale-Fire-esque second narrative that plays out entirely through footnotes in that manuscript. I never thought I'd see someone attempt another Pale Fire, and I certainly never thought they would pull it off.
Dr. Voth's footnotes are occasionally simply academic in nature, complete with citations and thoughts on queer theory or history. But the footnotes grow more and more unhinged (and occasionally even speak to each other) as Voth's position at the university is put almost entirely in the control of a giant pharmaceutical-military-industrial-complex of a company that's subsidizing the university. Voth is also having a bit of a personal crisis that is only inflamed by the manuscript. Voth, like the manuscript's Jack Sheppard, is a trans man who loves a woman passionately, though Voth has lost his love. The manuscript opens up something in Voth, there is power in seeing yourself represented on the page after all, but the world begins to close in on him the way it does on Jack. Hijinks, of course, ensue.
I am confident that there is an audience that will passionately adore this book and give it a kind of cult following and I would very much like for that audience to find this book. So who falls into this category? People who love academia and satires of academia, people interested in queer history, people who like nontraditional narratives, people who are super into 18th century history. As an extra bonus, everyone who reads this book will get a variety of swear words and slang for genitalia that may or may not actually be from the 18th century. (I couldn't tell you if these are real or just delightfully invented by our author, but they are all fantastic.)
I enjoyed this book quite a lot, though sometimes I admired it more than enjoyed it. This is very much a subjective me-as-a-reader thing. I left academia long ago, I read virtually no 18th century writing and very little historical fiction, and my interest was almost entirely in the trans characters in the book, especially trans men who aren't represented as often as trans women. (And I'm an absolute sucker for a Waters + Nabokov hook, what can I say?) It took me a couple weeks to read it, but I stuck with it for a few chapters every night. For me it was best digested that way, a little at a time. Though in the middle, especially during Jack's scenes with Bess (so steamy!) where I would get really lost in the story.
I really love a big swing, and this is a hell of a big swing. I'm excited that it exists and I'm thrilled that it found a publisher who is putting it out there.
Dr. Voth's footnotes are occasionally simply academic in nature, complete with citations and thoughts on queer theory or history. But the footnotes grow more and more unhinged (and occasionally even speak to each other) as Voth's position at the university is put almost entirely in the control of a giant pharmaceutical-military-industrial-complex of a company that's subsidizing the university. Voth is also having a bit of a personal crisis that is only inflamed by the manuscript. Voth, like the manuscript's Jack Sheppard, is a trans man who loves a woman passionately, though Voth has lost his love. The manuscript opens up something in Voth, there is power in seeing yourself represented on the page after all, but the world begins to close in on him the way it does on Jack. Hijinks, of course, ensue.
I am confident that there is an audience that will passionately adore this book and give it a kind of cult following and I would very much like for that audience to find this book. So who falls into this category? People who love academia and satires of academia, people interested in queer history, people who like nontraditional narratives, people who are super into 18th century history. As an extra bonus, everyone who reads this book will get a variety of swear words and slang for genitalia that may or may not actually be from the 18th century. (I couldn't tell you if these are real or just delightfully invented by our author, but they are all fantastic.)
I enjoyed this book quite a lot, though sometimes I admired it more than enjoyed it. This is very much a subjective me-as-a-reader thing. I left academia long ago, I read virtually no 18th century writing and very little historical fiction, and my interest was almost entirely in the trans characters in the book, especially trans men who aren't represented as often as trans women. (And I'm an absolute sucker for a Waters + Nabokov hook, what can I say?) It took me a couple weeks to read it, but I stuck with it for a few chapters every night. For me it was best digested that way, a little at a time. Though in the middle, especially during Jack's scenes with Bess (so steamy!) where I would get really lost in the story.
I really love a big swing, and this is a hell of a big swing. I'm excited that it exists and I'm thrilled that it found a publisher who is putting it out there.
May 7, 2018
What is this? Well, a damn hard book to review, to start. On one level we have what is presented as the 'recently discovered autobiography' of Jack Sheppard, real-life petty thief and escapee from jail in early 1700s London. Sheppard lived fast and died young, then proceeded to become an enormously famous figure in English folklore, probably most recognizable today as the inspiration for "The Ballad of Mack the Knife" in The Threepenny Opera. But Confessions of the Fox is in fact a novel, and though it otherwise mostly stays close to the facts and dates (as we know them) of Jack's life, here Jack is a transman, his girlfriend Bess is the daughter of a South Asian man who was press-ganged by the East India Company before escaping into an independant communal society hidden away in the fens of East Anglia, and his best friend Aurie is a black gay man. Just to be clear, I am all for this presentation of a multiracial queer history.
A second level of story is presented through footnotes, much like House of Leaves (though infinitely less confusing than that book, since we only have two levels of story here rather than the four or five in House of Leaves). This narrator is Dr R. Voth, a professor of English literature who is editing Jack's "autobiography" for publication and who is a transman himself. Voth alternates between telling mundane stories of his life – his ex, his job troubles, his attempts to ask out a neighbor – and citing genuine academic sources to provide context for Jack's story. Voth is fictional but his sources are not, which makes for an unsettling mixture of truth and imagination; I think I would have assumed the academic footnotes were also fictional if I hadn't happened to recognize several early ones. I've read Gretchen Gerzina's Black London: Life Before Emancipation and Walter Johnson's Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market, among others, and seeing them mentioned by a fictional character was like water to the face, confusing my assumption of what was real and what wasn't.
As the story goes on, "P-Quad Publishers and Pharmaceuticals" in association with "Militia.edu" attempts to take control of Jack's autobiography and Voth's work on it, leading both levels of Confessions of the Fox to become critiques of the commodification of the body and its experiences, capitalism in general, the history of the discovery and modern patenting of synthetic testosterone, and how historical biographies enter (or, more often, don't enter) the archive.
Which leaves us in an odd place. If you didn't instantly recognize what I meant by The Archive in that previous line, if you're one of the vast majority of humans on Earth who haven't read Appadurai's "Commodities and the Politics of Value", then I'm not sure this book is interested in talking to you. Certainly if Rosenberg ever bothered to explain any of these concepts in an introductory way I missed it. On the other hand, if you, like me, are an overeducated liberal who can nod pretentiously at sentences like "A commodity is an entity without qualities", then I'm not sure Confessions of the Fox has anything new to say to you. It restates various queer, postcolonial, and Marxist theories without adding anything to them or combining them in interesting ways. Like, sure, we all agree with Foucault that prisons form the model for surveillance and discipline by the wider society, but so what? Do something with that idea, expand upon it, challenge it, or else there's no reason to read Rosenberg's book if you've already read Foucault's. So then who is Confessions of the Fox for? I have genuinely no idea.
The love story between Jack and Bess or the adventure of Jack's exploits should have been enough to carry their half of the story. I love me a good historical thriller of criminals and the whores they adore. But we didn't really get that here; we see Jack and Bess's first meeting and first night spent together, but then we jump ahead to them as an already established relationship without seeing how they grow together and build trust and affection. Similarly, we never see Jack learn to pick pockets or burglar houses; he's just an innocent apprentice and then suddenly a famously skilled thief. He meets Aurie once and then we're told they're brothers-in-arms without ever seeing their friendship. Etc. In addition to all this, it's hard to love characters who are more living examples of theories than they are three-dimensional people, particularly when they keep bursting into dialogue like this example:
Bess stood, speaking to the entire room. “Plague’s an excuse they’re using to police us further!” She looked out. Most continued to quaff and quarrel amongst themselves. “All of you! They’re panicking the people delib’rately. It’s a securitizational furor they’re raising to put more centinels on the streets. Can’t you see that?”
It's not even that I disagree with the concept of "security theater", but it's not good fiction to have your characters straight-up define it, and then POINTING OUT IN A FOOTNOTE THAT THE 1720-ISH DATE WOULD MAKE HER THE FIRST TO DO SO IS EVEN WORSE, OH MY GOD, DON'T PRAISE YOUR OWN FICTIONAL CHARACTERS FOR THE MODERN LANGUAGE YOU GAVE THEM.
Ahhh, I don't know. I agree with all of Confessions of the Fox's politics, I want to support histories (fictional or not) with more accurate, multiracial, and queer portrayals of the past, and I've certainly read far, far worse books, but in the end I just didn't much enjoy this. The worst I can say is that it's unengaging; I found my attention constantly drifting whenever I tried to read, and even put it down for a few weeks before finally coming back to finish it. But no matter what its good intentions, that doesn't make for a book I'd recommend. In the end Confessions of the Fox has a fantastic concept, but unfortunately doesn't pull off the execution.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
A second level of story is presented through footnotes, much like House of Leaves (though infinitely less confusing than that book, since we only have two levels of story here rather than the four or five in House of Leaves). This narrator is Dr R. Voth, a professor of English literature who is editing Jack's "autobiography" for publication and who is a transman himself. Voth alternates between telling mundane stories of his life – his ex, his job troubles, his attempts to ask out a neighbor – and citing genuine academic sources to provide context for Jack's story. Voth is fictional but his sources are not, which makes for an unsettling mixture of truth and imagination; I think I would have assumed the academic footnotes were also fictional if I hadn't happened to recognize several early ones. I've read Gretchen Gerzina's Black London: Life Before Emancipation and Walter Johnson's Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market, among others, and seeing them mentioned by a fictional character was like water to the face, confusing my assumption of what was real and what wasn't.
As the story goes on, "P-Quad Publishers and Pharmaceuticals" in association with "Militia.edu" attempts to take control of Jack's autobiography and Voth's work on it, leading both levels of Confessions of the Fox to become critiques of the commodification of the body and its experiences, capitalism in general, the history of the discovery and modern patenting of synthetic testosterone, and how historical biographies enter (or, more often, don't enter) the archive.
Which leaves us in an odd place. If you didn't instantly recognize what I meant by The Archive in that previous line, if you're one of the vast majority of humans on Earth who haven't read Appadurai's "Commodities and the Politics of Value", then I'm not sure this book is interested in talking to you. Certainly if Rosenberg ever bothered to explain any of these concepts in an introductory way I missed it. On the other hand, if you, like me, are an overeducated liberal who can nod pretentiously at sentences like "A commodity is an entity without qualities", then I'm not sure Confessions of the Fox has anything new to say to you. It restates various queer, postcolonial, and Marxist theories without adding anything to them or combining them in interesting ways. Like, sure, we all agree with Foucault that prisons form the model for surveillance and discipline by the wider society, but so what? Do something with that idea, expand upon it, challenge it, or else there's no reason to read Rosenberg's book if you've already read Foucault's. So then who is Confessions of the Fox for? I have genuinely no idea.
The love story between Jack and Bess or the adventure of Jack's exploits should have been enough to carry their half of the story. I love me a good historical thriller of criminals and the whores they adore. But we didn't really get that here; we see Jack and Bess's first meeting and first night spent together, but then we jump ahead to them as an already established relationship without seeing how they grow together and build trust and affection. Similarly, we never see Jack learn to pick pockets or burglar houses; he's just an innocent apprentice and then suddenly a famously skilled thief. He meets Aurie once and then we're told they're brothers-in-arms without ever seeing their friendship. Etc. In addition to all this, it's hard to love characters who are more living examples of theories than they are three-dimensional people, particularly when they keep bursting into dialogue like this example:
Bess stood, speaking to the entire room. “Plague’s an excuse they’re using to police us further!” She looked out. Most continued to quaff and quarrel amongst themselves. “All of you! They’re panicking the people delib’rately. It’s a securitizational furor they’re raising to put more centinels on the streets. Can’t you see that?”
It's not even that I disagree with the concept of "security theater", but it's not good fiction to have your characters straight-up define it, and then POINTING OUT IN A FOOTNOTE THAT THE 1720-ISH DATE WOULD MAKE HER THE FIRST TO DO SO IS EVEN WORSE, OH MY GOD, DON'T PRAISE YOUR OWN FICTIONAL CHARACTERS FOR THE MODERN LANGUAGE YOU GAVE THEM.
Ahhh, I don't know. I agree with all of Confessions of the Fox's politics, I want to support histories (fictional or not) with more accurate, multiracial, and queer portrayals of the past, and I've certainly read far, far worse books, but in the end I just didn't much enjoy this. The worst I can say is that it's unengaging; I found my attention constantly drifting whenever I tried to read, and even put it down for a few weeks before finally coming back to finish it. But no matter what its good intentions, that doesn't make for a book I'd recommend. In the end Confessions of the Fox has a fantastic concept, but unfortunately doesn't pull off the execution.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
January 2, 2019
(Jack Sheppard in Newgate Prison, artist unknown)
I was really excited to get this novel, thinking it sounded similar to Sarah Waters' books and it's been awhile since she's published anything. Confessions of the Fox, rather than reading like a Sarah Waters novel, is much more in line with J.J. Abrams' S.. It is a story within a story, and I'm not very fond of those. Even though I usually have more than one book I'm reading at a time, I still don't want to have two stories reading simultaneously in one book. I find it distracting to the point of irritation and that is how this book was for me. Because of that, I decided to skip over the story within, though that left me feeling guilty! The main story, I enjoyed at times and others I found it too crudely written for my liking.
Confessions of the Fox is a fictional account of the real-life 18th century notorious thief and jail-breaker Jack Sheppard of London. In the present time, someone finds a previously lost manuscript of a book about Sheppard and decides to publish it. The story-within is written in the form of footnotes. Some of the footnotes are word definitions or give context to what is written in the manuscript, and the rest is the "editor" talking about his love life. Because the manuscript is "from" the 18th century, the author uses much slang from that time which I found to be bothersome. Some period slang is good and adds to a story. The amount used in this book was just annoying. Sometimes there were footnotes for several words on a page, and many of the words are used only once, giving me the impression that the author merely wants to show off his research into the time period. Most of the slang words were for either genitalia or thievery, such as "boiling places" for vaginas and "sugar sticks" for penises. I really don't feel like it added anything to the book to have constant crude terms used for genitalia but instead cheapened it. There is a lot of sex in the book, which is fine by me, but it was crassly written. For instance, the author several times tells us how they liked to sniff the other's armpits or even sleep with their nose in it, loving the scent. Really? That is disgusting, especially because people didn't bathe often back then and did not have deodorant.
There were a couple times when I was really drawn into the story, but only a couple. I kept hoping it would get better and that's why I stuck with it; really though, I should have given up after the first couple of chapters. Most historical fiction has straight and cis-gender characters, so I normally find it refreshing to read this genre when there are LGBTQ+ characters. Unfortunately, this book was not refreshing nor was it enjoyable.
Perhaps some will enjoy this writing style more than I. If you liked S., you might enjoy this book. If you like to constantly check footnotes whilst reading a novel, some of which are pages long, you might enjoy this book. Footnotes in non-fiction is one thing, but for novels... not my cup of tea. This could have been an extremely interesting and fun book; instead it fell flat and hard, and I just kept checking the bottom of the Kindle to see how much further I had to go, not because I didn't want it to end, but because I couldn't wait for it to.
August 30, 2019
I always find it strange how some books find you. Recently I started reading ‘Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl’. When I needed a bit of a break from that, I decided to go for the opposite end of the spectrum, and opt for historical fiction. Little did I know that not only is Jordy Rosenberg’s novel a trans take on the story of Jack Sheppard from Brecht’s Threepenny Opera, but that Andrea Lawlor is his “oldest and dearest buddy”.
Needless to say, I fell in love with ‘Confessions of the Fox’. Written like a spoof version of an 18th century potboiler, the Capitalisation must have made both the editor and proof reader cross-eyed. Then there are the copious footnotes, which not only elaborate on the period language used and the customs of the time, but also thread a completely different narrative strand.
Here the much-maligned Dr. Voth recounts his ongoing battle with the (mal)administration of academia, not to mention his disastrous love life. Told in a contemporary style, with enough profanity to make a sailor blush, these sections are extremely funny. Although they do read like a totally separate text, this weird hybrid of a book does cohere rather magically. It is a rollicking, mad, sexy caper of a novel that makes the reader fall in love with its wonderful characters.
Needless to say, I fell in love with ‘Confessions of the Fox’. Written like a spoof version of an 18th century potboiler, the Capitalisation must have made both the editor and proof reader cross-eyed. Then there are the copious footnotes, which not only elaborate on the period language used and the customs of the time, but also thread a completely different narrative strand.
Here the much-maligned Dr. Voth recounts his ongoing battle with the (mal)administration of academia, not to mention his disastrous love life. Told in a contemporary style, with enough profanity to make a sailor blush, these sections are extremely funny. Although they do read like a totally separate text, this weird hybrid of a book does cohere rather magically. It is a rollicking, mad, sexy caper of a novel that makes the reader fall in love with its wonderful characters.
June 17, 2018
An experimental alternate-history anti-colonial prison-abolitionist hella-queer (and very sexy) feminist trans novel. It's thrilling to watch Rosenberg at play. Among other things (form (the interaction of the 'old' and new texts provides not just a critical framework but an affective one, too) and character (I love Jack and Bess separately, and together)), I was wowed by what seems like pyrotechnic linguistic skill -- and invention -- and a tightly sprung, magnificently orchestrated plot. Whew! And making so much more space for what 'the trans novel' can be and do. (Not to suggest it's *only* a trans novel but that it is one, thoroughly and explicitly.) TEN STARS
June 23, 2018
Jack Sheppard is a real historical figure, 'a notorious English thief and gaol-breaker of early 18th-century London'. In Confessions of the Fox, Professor R. Voth turns up a hitherto-undiscovered biography of Sheppard – allegedly an authentic original – at a university book sale, and sets about investigating and annotating it. What makes this story distinctive is that Voth is a trans man, and as he pores over the manuscript, he realises Jack is trans too. The manuscript tells of Jack's crimes, his relationship with his lover Bess (who, in another detail absent from other historical accounts, is of South Asian heritage), and his efforts to evade 'Thief-Taker General' Jonathan Wild; but it is also the story of Jack becoming his true self, finding liberation through presentation, companionship, sex and love.
Part clever satire, part subversive and audacious reimagining of history, the Jack portion of the book is outstanding. If the ways in which it plays with narrative are not always convincingly contemporary, it carries you along in a way that a) makes you feel this is all part of the game and b) is entertaining enough that it doesn't matter. It's also genuinely enlightening about trans identity and sexuality. At times it is hard to read, but that's the point. Some passages describing Jack's experiences with dysphoria brought tears to my eyes.
Jack is a wonderful creation. His journey of self-actualisation, transformation and fulfillment, culminating in near-literal rebirth, will both break your heart and make you feel ecstatic.
Voth's contribution, told almost entirely through footnotes, is unfortunately possessed of an unevenness that doesn't affect the Jack narrative. It starts really well: the prologue is fantastic. But as it goes on, Voth starts talking more about his personal life than the manuscript, and while I can see what Rosenberg is trying to do here, I think overall it's a misstep. Despite the increasingly villainous behaviour of the university, Voth comes off as pompous, sleazy and difficult to like. The intriguing developments in his situation towards the end feel unfinished; I wish we could've had more room for elaboration on this and less of him going on about his ex.
So Confessions of the Fox isn't perfect, but it's a really exciting, important novel. People (me included) are always saying books are 'like nothing else' but, really – this is like nothing else. Not because of the story, exactly, but because of the unique way it conceptualises and contextualises the trans experience. At its heart, it's a bigger story than Jack Sheppard, an origin story with such scope it might be as close as it gets to universal. It's thrilling in a way most novels couldn't dream of being.
I received an advance review copy of Confessions of the Fox from the publisher through Edelweiss.
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Part clever satire, part subversive and audacious reimagining of history, the Jack portion of the book is outstanding. If the ways in which it plays with narrative are not always convincingly contemporary, it carries you along in a way that a) makes you feel this is all part of the game and b) is entertaining enough that it doesn't matter. It's also genuinely enlightening about trans identity and sexuality. At times it is hard to read, but that's the point. Some passages describing Jack's experiences with dysphoria brought tears to my eyes.
He'd imagin'd this would be easy—this saying himself into being—but now it didn't feel entirely right or True. He became loosed from his Body, floating up to the splintered-beam ceiling of the pub. He look'd down quizzically at himself saying "Jack," and it seemed so ridiculous to have thought he could ever be Jack—and now she look'd at him quizzically too—and he wanted to slip through the ceiling-planks and fly out of the pub in Shame.
Jack is a wonderful creation. His journey of self-actualisation, transformation and fulfillment, culminating in near-literal rebirth, will both break your heart and make you feel ecstatic.
Voth's contribution, told almost entirely through footnotes, is unfortunately possessed of an unevenness that doesn't affect the Jack narrative. It starts really well: the prologue is fantastic. But as it goes on, Voth starts talking more about his personal life than the manuscript, and while I can see what Rosenberg is trying to do here, I think overall it's a misstep. Despite the increasingly villainous behaviour of the university, Voth comes off as pompous, sleazy and difficult to like. The intriguing developments in his situation towards the end feel unfinished; I wish we could've had more room for elaboration on this and less of him going on about his ex.
So Confessions of the Fox isn't perfect, but it's a really exciting, important novel. People (me included) are always saying books are 'like nothing else' but, really – this is like nothing else. Not because of the story, exactly, but because of the unique way it conceptualises and contextualises the trans experience. At its heart, it's a bigger story than Jack Sheppard, an origin story with such scope it might be as close as it gets to universal. It's thrilling in a way most novels couldn't dream of being.
I received an advance review copy of Confessions of the Fox from the publisher through Edelweiss.
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January 25, 2019
Jordy Rosenberg's debut Confessions of the Fox is an immensely accomplished addition to the growing canon of Trans Lit. Following the story of a manuscript discovered in a University library sale that purports to be an authentic biography of the life of English folk hero and thief, Jack Sheppard, the novel moves back and forth between the manuscript and the notes made by its transcribed - a trans man academic. The manuscript provides strange new details of Sheppard's life, suggesting that he himself was an early trans man and restoring the factual racial diversity of the time that is frequently erased. The metatextuality, which brings to mind a less chaotic and much funnier version of House of Leaves, elevates each story which in lesser writers' hands could've been two separate novels. This novel speaks to the trans world that I know - both contemporarily living within it and as an historian of trans lives. It moved me/turned me on/terrified me in places, and probably made me more of a communist than my usual champagne socialism would allow. Not since Stone Butch Blues has a novel felt so much like home.
March 13, 2019
My experience with this book was all over the map. It's a strange mix of genres: the frame narrative is a trans man academic who finds an undiscovered 18th century manuscript about a famous thief who was also a trans man. The majority of the story is the historical narrative with footnotes taking place in the academic's increasingly satirical / dystopian world. I was super into it at first but found my attention waning and feeling uncomfortable with the role women of colour played for white men and confused about how the portrayal of historical transness might intersect with intersexuality.
July 2, 2018
Confessions of the Fox has a fascinating premise: a recently heart-broken professor has uncovered and is annotating a long-lost manuscript that exposes the gender-defying true story about two notorious thieves who were lovers in 18th-century London.
Unfortunately, this was just an overly tedious read for me. The seemingly never-ending footnotes acted as a third (or fourth?) plot line, and the back and forth between the notes and the story made it impossible to get immersed at all in any story whatsoever. While this was definitely not my cuppa, it might be appreciated by those who enjoy a more challenging read.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for providing me with a free digital review copy.
Unfortunately, this was just an overly tedious read for me. The seemingly never-ending footnotes acted as a third (or fourth?) plot line, and the back and forth between the notes and the story made it impossible to get immersed at all in any story whatsoever. While this was definitely not my cuppa, it might be appreciated by those who enjoy a more challenging read.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for providing me with a free digital review copy.
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July 30, 2018This was not for me, and for different reasons than I'd expected. Review coming soon IY"H. Sorry it took me such a long time to read, I would have DNFed were it not for the ARC and the fact that several people asked me for my opinion of the book.
Update!
Here is my review:
http://www.bogireadstheworld.com/nove...
Over 1.5k words.
Source of the book: Print ARC from the publisher
Update!
Here is my review:
http://www.bogireadstheworld.com/nove...
Over 1.5k words.
Source of the book: Print ARC from the publisher
May 23, 2018
This is a queering and de-whiting of the historical legend of Jack Sheppard, the master gaolbreaker, thief, and carpenter of 1720’s London. Wait, it’s the framing narrative of the academic who finds and edits Sheppard’s journal. No, actually it’s the hot romantic account of Jack and his more-than-lover Bess as well as the erotic and professional wanderings of the academic. And also, it’s a monstrous ride down the Thames in a little boat, where maybe you can hear Moll Flanders, Oroonoko, Tom Jones, and Tristram Shandy calling to each other in London cant from the shite-clogged, fogbound shores.
I read Confessions of the Fox as an advance reader copy, knowing only that it was categorized as LGBTQ, thinking it might be a hist-rom, but knowing nothing more. It is SO much more that I won’t labor to (mis)place it in a genre.
What you really need to know is that on several occasions---sometimes over the span of only twenty pages, sometimes in public places—I found myself gaping, saying “Oh my god!”, and smacking my hand to my forehead as I watched events unfold. The book is tied to the facts known about Sheppard’s life, and as with all queering, there is in that life ample territory that History has glossed over.
Speaking of glossing, you may find old mates like Defoe and Spinoza (!) taking the mic, but also Marx, Foucault, and Felix Guattari. What and how, you ask? Wavy finger: you have to read it.
When you do read Confessions of the Fox, know that you’re going to come unwrapped. Or come, unwrapped. You, like me, may have to take intensity breaks from time to time, just to grok the emotions and stop plastering yourself against the glass as you strain toward characters whose survival depends on dealing with the monstrous. In public but most importantly in private.
Notes with different types of readers in mind:
1.) philosophy occupies this book at some points. The characters bring it up, so don’t let its philosophy-ness stop you. It’s how they think, and it adds to the mind-blow of the last 10% of the book.
2.) the book takes no prisoners (pun intended) when it comes to sex and politics, and some scenes approach a Grand Guignol feeling. For me, this added to the surprise, poignancy, and beauty of the book. Know that it will come.
The best feature of the book (for me) is the narrative voice of the academic. Highly educated, sexy, neurotic, and incapable of protecting himself, his account rises and falls like a broken carnival ride. And he’s funny: “I know that technically speaking, I look like I could do someone pretty good. I’m aware that I have this sleazy but not creepy (says I!) demeanor. It’s sort of cultivated but it’s also just there—this wiry, wolfish aspect. You look at me and you just know you wouldn’t have to be embarrassed by any shit you wanted to do or get done to you because I’m already giving this kind of shameless, gross vibe. And clearly Ursula already knows everything about me, since she’s my pharmacist for crissake. So that’s a green light right there.”
Four ½ stars: not light reading, but it’s a gorgeous graft of richness upon richness.
I read Confessions of the Fox as an advance reader copy, knowing only that it was categorized as LGBTQ, thinking it might be a hist-rom, but knowing nothing more. It is SO much more that I won’t labor to (mis)place it in a genre.
What you really need to know is that on several occasions---sometimes over the span of only twenty pages, sometimes in public places—I found myself gaping, saying “Oh my god!”, and smacking my hand to my forehead as I watched events unfold. The book is tied to the facts known about Sheppard’s life, and as with all queering, there is in that life ample territory that History has glossed over.
Speaking of glossing, you may find old mates like Defoe and Spinoza (!) taking the mic, but also Marx, Foucault, and Felix Guattari. What and how, you ask? Wavy finger: you have to read it.
When you do read Confessions of the Fox, know that you’re going to come unwrapped. Or come, unwrapped. You, like me, may have to take intensity breaks from time to time, just to grok the emotions and stop plastering yourself against the glass as you strain toward characters whose survival depends on dealing with the monstrous. In public but most importantly in private.
Notes with different types of readers in mind:
1.) philosophy occupies this book at some points. The characters bring it up, so don’t let its philosophy-ness stop you. It’s how they think, and it adds to the mind-blow of the last 10% of the book.
2.) the book takes no prisoners (pun intended) when it comes to sex and politics, and some scenes approach a Grand Guignol feeling. For me, this added to the surprise, poignancy, and beauty of the book. Know that it will come.
The best feature of the book (for me) is the narrative voice of the academic. Highly educated, sexy, neurotic, and incapable of protecting himself, his account rises and falls like a broken carnival ride. And he’s funny: “I know that technically speaking, I look like I could do someone pretty good. I’m aware that I have this sleazy but not creepy (says I!) demeanor. It’s sort of cultivated but it’s also just there—this wiry, wolfish aspect. You look at me and you just know you wouldn’t have to be embarrassed by any shit you wanted to do or get done to you because I’m already giving this kind of shameless, gross vibe. And clearly Ursula already knows everything about me, since she’s my pharmacist for crissake. So that’s a green light right there.”
Four ½ stars: not light reading, but it’s a gorgeous graft of richness upon richness.
January 5, 2023
i love theory, and i love novels, but something like, artistically terrible and deeply cringey happens when the two come too close together. in "confessions of a fox," you get some strange theory novel where everything is painfully contrived, twee, unsexy, and with no real bite. characters arent so much people as they are one dimensional mouthpieces for theorizing. as a result, you get, in this book at least, 18th century characters speaking in 1700s rogue slang while basically quoting postcolonial theory. the effect is bizarre, anachronistic. i really want to be on rosenbergs side here, but having a character in 1700 use a term from contemporary critical theory, then footnote the characters usage and say it is the first in known history, is pretty inexcusable. like.. you wrote it brother!! you cant just use a footnote meta narrative to congratulate yourself on how "smart" the book is!!!
an example:
"..he looks at Dean of Surveillance Andrews in that collegial neo-colonizer kind of way and shrugs."
no one talks like that!!! it's so bad i want it to be satire!! im so sorry im a hater for this book!!!! im just mad because queer/trans people deserve better, more meaningful literature than this!!!!
also. a character in 1700 hundred whatever just. performs top surgery on a trans man in a brothel with no training. she's just reading the top surgery manual (which exists i guess sure) and doing the top surgery in real time. there are no complications or consequences of this at all.
an example:
"..he looks at Dean of Surveillance Andrews in that collegial neo-colonizer kind of way and shrugs."
no one talks like that!!! it's so bad i want it to be satire!! im so sorry im a hater for this book!!!! im just mad because queer/trans people deserve better, more meaningful literature than this!!!!
also. a character in 1700 hundred whatever just. performs top surgery on a trans man in a brothel with no training. she's just reading the top surgery manual (which exists i guess sure) and doing the top surgery in real time. there are no complications or consequences of this at all.
August 7, 2018
I was lucky enough to win a copy of Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg.
Confessions of the Fox is a story within a story, converging over two very different timelines. The first story is the main bulk of the novel, while the second story takes place primarily in the footnotes. The two stories have unifying threads that connect in the shared theme of found family within resistance. As a trans man, I was really interested to read an own voices historical fantasy book about trans men considering how often we are erased from history.
There were many things about this book I really enjoyed. I found the depiction of Jack’s dysphoria relatable. Rosenberg did a great job of capturing that experience of dislocation from your body. He also captured the tiny patches of euphoria you experience when something affirms you and you lose that sense of dislocation. It was powerful to see Jack find that, have it shattered, but find it again. I really appreciated such an honest depiction of the highs and lows and how alone it can feel. Jack’s starvation for anything that reaffirmed his gender was palpable.
I also really enjoyed the depiction of transition in 18th century London. Some portions were hard to read and very graphic. However, it was refreshing to see Jack find, in whatever way he possibly could, a course of action to create a home in his body. His moments of happiness and fullness were very powerful.
The love story between Jack and Bess was also enjoyable. It was one of the main strengths of the novel as it showed both of them being utterly alone in different regards, but finding a source of comfort and connection together. This concept is touched on in the second story of the novel, where Dr. Voth comments that this manuscript is very clearly for those queer people who have been dropped by the wayside and forcibly rejected from (or forcibly lost) their families. I really enjoyed this.
Some aspects of the novel I liked less. The concept of the collective narrative was interesting but did not feel fully fleshed out. In the same vein, I wanted to see more of Aurie and his relationship with Jack but he was barely touched on throughout the novel. In general, I wasn’t a fan of Dr. Voth. Some aspects of his anxiety were relatable but I found a lot of his behavior creepy. If this was intentional, it worked well. His storyline contained some interesting narrative parallels to Jack’s story. Those parallels were never explored. They diverged, became confusing, and lacked closure.
Throughout both stories, this novel explores the necessity of resistance. It’s a story of transition, of language and body, of love and coming around to understanding, and of revolution against the commodification of people. It’s a story about queer people being together in aloneness and fighting back against the thrashing waves of a violent world, finding safety and refuge within each other.
Edit: Please read Bogi Takács's review of this book, as it goes more into depth about many of the things I disliked: http://www.bogireadstheworld.com/nove...
Confessions of the Fox is a story within a story, converging over two very different timelines. The first story is the main bulk of the novel, while the second story takes place primarily in the footnotes. The two stories have unifying threads that connect in the shared theme of found family within resistance. As a trans man, I was really interested to read an own voices historical fantasy book about trans men considering how often we are erased from history.
There were many things about this book I really enjoyed. I found the depiction of Jack’s dysphoria relatable. Rosenberg did a great job of capturing that experience of dislocation from your body. He also captured the tiny patches of euphoria you experience when something affirms you and you lose that sense of dislocation. It was powerful to see Jack find that, have it shattered, but find it again. I really appreciated such an honest depiction of the highs and lows and how alone it can feel. Jack’s starvation for anything that reaffirmed his gender was palpable.
I also really enjoyed the depiction of transition in 18th century London. Some portions were hard to read and very graphic. However, it was refreshing to see Jack find, in whatever way he possibly could, a course of action to create a home in his body. His moments of happiness and fullness were very powerful.
The love story between Jack and Bess was also enjoyable. It was one of the main strengths of the novel as it showed both of them being utterly alone in different regards, but finding a source of comfort and connection together. This concept is touched on in the second story of the novel, where Dr. Voth comments that this manuscript is very clearly for those queer people who have been dropped by the wayside and forcibly rejected from (or forcibly lost) their families. I really enjoyed this.
Some aspects of the novel I liked less. The concept of the collective narrative was interesting but did not feel fully fleshed out. In the same vein, I wanted to see more of Aurie and his relationship with Jack but he was barely touched on throughout the novel. In general, I wasn’t a fan of Dr. Voth. Some aspects of his anxiety were relatable but I found a lot of his behavior creepy. If this was intentional, it worked well. His storyline contained some interesting narrative parallels to Jack’s story. Those parallels were never explored. They diverged, became confusing, and lacked closure.
Throughout both stories, this novel explores the necessity of resistance. It’s a story of transition, of language and body, of love and coming around to understanding, and of revolution against the commodification of people. It’s a story about queer people being together in aloneness and fighting back against the thrashing waves of a violent world, finding safety and refuge within each other.
Edit: Please read Bogi Takács's review of this book, as it goes more into depth about many of the things I disliked: http://www.bogireadstheworld.com/nove...
August 29, 2018
This book is an extremely niche bit of revolutionary fun. I strongly recommend this book for readers with familiarity with either of the following: major trends in humanities scholarship (especially the contradictions of teaching literary history in neoliberal institutions) and readers with an interest in queer or trans topics. This story is fun, but there are two intertwined stories which confused me at first: Jack Sheppard (from John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, written in 1728) and Dr. Voth (the literature professor who tells his story of editing the book you read via footnotes and editorial notes). I'm clearly in the unique position of sitting at the intersection of these two readerships, which is probably why I absolutely loved this book. This is metafiction, and that kind of thing normally turns me off (I'm looking at you, DFW and Junot Diaz). Actually, I take that back. Metafiction works really well in genre fiction, especially Sci-Fi/Fantasy/YA because those genres don't aspire to be hyper-intellectual. (Actually, Redshirts is fun and meta while also betraying seriously intellectual aspirations...)
This book works because it simultaneously pokes fun at the contradictions of working in the academy in the early 21st century while also leaving plenty of room for truly revolutionary thinking. It makes some of the weirdest, most abstruse ideas from literary theory tangibly relevant in ways that an academic monograph or journal article never could (Deleuze, Guattari, Derrida, Bataille, Foucault, etc). And as an academic, it gave me a very clear sense of hope even if the fun of this book might not operate at that register for all readers.
Also, the book is really feminist. At one point, one of the characters tells her story for PAGES without any footnotes (and let me tell you, the footnotes of this book are where it's at), and then once she's done, the editor indicates that he intentionally didn't make any notes because he doesn't interrupt a woman while she's talking. It made me laugh and cry at the same time. What a book!
This book works because it simultaneously pokes fun at the contradictions of working in the academy in the early 21st century while also leaving plenty of room for truly revolutionary thinking. It makes some of the weirdest, most abstruse ideas from literary theory tangibly relevant in ways that an academic monograph or journal article never could (Deleuze, Guattari, Derrida, Bataille, Foucault, etc). And as an academic, it gave me a very clear sense of hope even if the fun of this book might not operate at that register for all readers.
Also, the book is really feminist. At one point, one of the characters tells her story for PAGES without any footnotes (and let me tell you, the footnotes of this book are where it's at), and then once she's done, the editor indicates that he intentionally didn't make any notes because he doesn't interrupt a woman while she's talking. It made me laugh and cry at the same time. What a book!
March 27, 2021
Rly fun! Recommend if you like:
-queer/trans theory
-footnotes
-framing devices
-scathing roasts of academia
-olde timey English
-piss play
-18th century London
-queer/trans theory
-footnotes
-framing devices
-scathing roasts of academia
-olde timey English
-piss play
-18th century London
May 24, 2018
Recently dumped college professor, Dr. Voth, discovers the diaries of 18th century master thief Jack Sheppard. The novel is Dr. Voth’s painstaking transcription of the manuscript and their own increasingly frantic personal footnotes.
So, ultimately, what you have is two stories, kind of cunningly layered over each other.
I’ll be honest, it felt like a little too much work at first, but, I’m a sucker for footnotes, and, by the end, I was into it.
Jack’s story is the one more extensively told. It’s of an orphan, P, who is sold, essentially, to a man who makes tufted footstools for aristocratic pets. After years, P figures out how to escape and begins to build their identity as Jack Sheppard, master thief.
Jack’s story was interesting and really colorful, and taught me a bunch of 18th-century words for prostitute, but, as the book went on, I actually found Dr. Voth’s story more compelling.
Which is, I assume, the risk you run, layering stories, rather than shifting narrators.
This is not a drawback, necessarily, just a note. Both stories were compelling, I just tend to gravitate toward smaller, more intimate stories, and I liked Dr. Voth’s run of Thomas Pynchon-bad bad luck. The way they break the fourth wall to directly address the reader, the casual fury with nonsense academia, the revolt against the giant monolithic corporation trying to commandeer the manuscript, their palpable (and darkly hilarious) decent into paranoia and madness, excitement about discoveries about the manuscript while transcribing the manuscript, making the book feel like a living thing—it all worked for me.
Dr. Voth’s excitement about the manuscript concerns its significance as the first known account of a transgender writer, and their desperation to authenticate the manuscript feels like it has significance far outside the fiction of Dr. Voth.
This is a hugely ambitious novel, and I think it works best if you check expectations at the outset.
Oh, probably being familiar with Brecht’s Three Penny Opera wouldn’t hurt either.
So, ultimately, what you have is two stories, kind of cunningly layered over each other.
I’ll be honest, it felt like a little too much work at first, but, I’m a sucker for footnotes, and, by the end, I was into it.
Jack’s story is the one more extensively told. It’s of an orphan, P, who is sold, essentially, to a man who makes tufted footstools for aristocratic pets. After years, P figures out how to escape and begins to build their identity as Jack Sheppard, master thief.
Jack’s story was interesting and really colorful, and taught me a bunch of 18th-century words for prostitute, but, as the book went on, I actually found Dr. Voth’s story more compelling.
Which is, I assume, the risk you run, layering stories, rather than shifting narrators.
This is not a drawback, necessarily, just a note. Both stories were compelling, I just tend to gravitate toward smaller, more intimate stories, and I liked Dr. Voth’s run of Thomas Pynchon-bad bad luck. The way they break the fourth wall to directly address the reader, the casual fury with nonsense academia, the revolt against the giant monolithic corporation trying to commandeer the manuscript, their palpable (and darkly hilarious) decent into paranoia and madness, excitement about discoveries about the manuscript while transcribing the manuscript, making the book feel like a living thing—it all worked for me.
Dr. Voth’s excitement about the manuscript concerns its significance as the first known account of a transgender writer, and their desperation to authenticate the manuscript feels like it has significance far outside the fiction of Dr. Voth.
This is a hugely ambitious novel, and I think it works best if you check expectations at the outset.
Oh, probably being familiar with Brecht’s Three Penny Opera wouldn’t hurt either.
November 22, 2018
If you’re into criminals with hearts of gold and also really enjoy scholarly research and footnotes, you will love this book. It’s two stories in one—the first is about Jack Sheppard, a thief in 1724 London, and the second is about the present-day professor who is transcribing Jack’s manuscript, told entirely through footnotes. The professor’s interest is piqued when he realizes that Jack was a trans man, which is something they share in common. Jack’s story is mesmerizing, his exploits and escapes from jail and his lovely romance with Bess, a prostitute, but the modern story is uneven, at times dry and clinical and at others manic and shout-y. Still, Jack’s thread was compelling enough—and certainly suspenseful enough!—to pull me through. Let’s hear it for historical fiction that doesn’t pretend only straight, cis, white people existed in the past.
February 4, 2019
This was such a disappointment and I DNF @50%. Conceptually I should love this book, as I love historical fiction, queered narratives, 18th century sex workers and thieves, found manuscripts/footnoted fiction, and have read all the Foucault and Marx on the emergence of capitalism, securitisation, surveillance etc that the author desperately wants you to. However the author manages to make all of these utterly boring, obvious, pretentious and entirely lacking in convincing story or characterisation. Worse than that for me though was the sexual objectification, fetishisation and disdain for women that constantly comes through in both the modern and historical narratives. If ever there was a book to remind me why I don't read books by men, and that them being trans or cis makes absolutely no difference to this, it was this book! A most unneeded trans addition to the wide literary canon of 'sexually frustrated male literature professors wang on about not being able to get laid or have their work appreciated'. Was it supposed to be satirising this? Who knows.
October 7, 2021
I want to have extra stars to give this book--writers I think tend to rate generously on this site but for this one I want more.
It's just brilliant and beautiful and romantic and radical (communists are always romantics, I told someone recently) and strange and layered and challenging and FUN and I feel like somewhere it gave me something I really needed to get through the last month of my life. I might just sit down and read it right over again.
It's just brilliant and beautiful and romantic and radical (communists are always romantics, I told someone recently) and strange and layered and challenging and FUN and I feel like somewhere it gave me something I really needed to get through the last month of my life. I might just sit down and read it right over again.
May 8, 2021
what the fuck was that
July 23, 2018
I was excited to get my hands on this book, since it rings two of my favorite fun-reading bells, 18th century fiction of the bawdy, funny Fielding/Sterne variety, and gender creativity. Happy to say I wasn't disappointed - and I got the added bonus of the corollary story of the 'editor's' life, told in footnotes - a technique I loved in Pale Fire, although this editor doesn't go nearly as far off the rails as Kinbote. There's all kinds of nods to post-colonial and queer thought both in the plot of the Confessions and in the editor's commentary, but you can immerse yourself in them as deeply or (like me) as shallowly you want - either way they give depth and meaning to both story lines without killing the plot, the pacing or the fun. I did get a bit lost in the 'Archives/Stretches', but I wasn't bothered by it - that's what archives are for anyway.
August 8, 2018
I don't know what to say about this book except it is a truly unique historical romp that is also connected to the present through footnotes. The subject material (past and present) was engaging, complex, and rang true. The organic unfolding of this story takes you through several layers of realization and was seriously a treat to read.
June 15, 2020
SPOILERS ABOUND! I’ve had some mixed feelings about this one. It was a very unusual and mostly entertaining read. I liked the language, for the most part. I thought the sex was hot and kinky (Bess naked on a toy rocking horse? Jack's armpit and pubic hair fetish? Dr Voth's obsession with watersports? I like it.) And I was initially into the speculative/ alternate history aspect (Jack Sheppard being trans, Bess and Blake being POC, etc), but then it knida fell apart for me (see point 2 below).
Things I didn’t like mostly fall into 3 categories.
1. The format. The lengthy footnotes with a secondary frame narrative didn’t really work for me. In the beginning, I felt like I was being constantly taken out of the main story to read notes that didn’t add much to my understanding of the characters or the historical background. So it was annoying. Maybe I would have found it more interesting if I was familiar with the book references? Then, when the footnotes became more random, with asides about Dr Voth’s sex life and professional altercations, I thought OK, maybe this is going somewhere. But then the secondary narrative was kind of left dangling with no proper resolution, which was really disappointing. Oh, and when I really could have done with some historical footnotes – like with the history of the Fens – they were nowhere to be seen!
2. The politics. So for me this book read mostly as a vehicle for the author’s political ideas. Which is cool, except I don’t think it’s as radical and progressive as the author seems to think it is (judging by his note in the acknowledgements). Here are some aspects I struggled with:
- Conflation of intersex and transgender narratives. It is strongly suggested in multiple passages that Jack Sheppard is both intersex and trans, and so is Dr Voth the editor. But this is never explored in any meaningful way – there isn’t a single footnote, a single mention of the word “intersex”. This smacks of the “melting pot” approach to LGBTQIA+ identity politics, which in practice means that larger and/or more vocal groups speak on behalf of everyone else.
- The stories of non-white characters are not given much depth. I felt that Bess and especially Aurie Blake were mostly there to propel Jack’s character development (I’m aware that they are usually support characters in the Shepperdiana canon, but making them black/brown in relation to a white Jack makes this really ugh). Bess randomly performs Jack’s top surgery, Aurie facilitates his escape from prison, both of them help save his life in the end. All of this reads very much like a Magical Negro trope: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical.... What motivates them, what do they get out of the relationship with Jack? (OK, Bess gets sex). Aurie’s blackness in particular doesn’t seem to play any meaningful part in the story. In the end it’s revealed that he has supposedly co-authored the “Confessions”, but his voice isn’t heard at all. To me, it felt like Jordy Rosenberg wrote him as a black character for the sake of appearing “woke” and having a “diversity cast”, but he didn’t actually have much to say about the experience of being a black gay man in 18th century London.
- The reveal about the manuscript having been ‘doctored’ by a radical group of left-wing activists bothers me for all sorts of reasons. I’m guessing this has something to do with Foucault’s ideas about the archive – which I’m not very familiar with, so may have misunderstood the author’s intention here. But it kinda felt like Rosenberg was endorsing this practice, in a “transform the past to transform the present” kind of way. And to me there’s a big difference between telling the stories of historically marginalised people (real or fictional), and rewriting history to appease the political sensibilities of the present. Because when the latter is done by well-meaning queer white authors and academics, the result is often not only racist and patronising in its own way, but also blind to its own racism (we are watching Hollywood at the moment, which feels like another prime example of this). OR is Rosenberg aware of this, and is using this plot twist to draw attention to this well-meaning blindness, in a very roundabout and meta way? Mm.
3. The book as a whole felt a little half-baked to me. There were some interesting ideas, but too many loose ends and things that felt sort of sloppy or contrived. I felt like the relationships between the characters in the nested narrative weren’t given room to develop – we see Jack meet Bess and Aurie for the first time, then they’re suddenly in an intense romantic relationship, or the best of friends? Same goes for Bess and Jenny, and even Jack and Wild. The frame narrative about Dr Voth had some interesting moments, but as I said, felt kind of unresolved in the end. The whole 'anti-capitalist proto-feminist pirate community' angle felt like a missed opportunity, as many 18th century pirate societies were in fact more egalitarian and democratic than the order of the day, and I think it could have been interesting to explore - but Rosenberg takes this too far into far-fetched territory, so it becomes too ridiculous to contemplate seriously. Some historical inaccuracies bugged me. Like when Bess is recalling the uprising of the Fen-dwellers, which she supposedly witnessed as a young girl. She talks about how the draining of the Fens was being carried out by Scottish inmates, who joined forces with the Fen-dwellers against the Surveyors. This puts these events somewhere between 1653 and 1658 (when Oliver Cromwell was Lord Protector, and, having defeated the Scots in the 1650 Battle of Dunbar, put the Scottish POWs to work on Fen drainage). So, even if Bess was only 10 at the time, this would make her a sprightly octogenarian in the 1720s, when she first meets Jack. Of course, the “manuscript was doctored by activists” plot device could potentially excuse any inaccuracies and contrivances, and that in itself feels pretty contrived, in a deus ex machina kinda way.
But maybe I’m being too harsh. I’m not really familiar with this genre (speculative historical fiction? metafiction?), nor with the many academic reference points, so could be way off base here.
Things I didn’t like mostly fall into 3 categories.
1. The format. The lengthy footnotes with a secondary frame narrative didn’t really work for me. In the beginning, I felt like I was being constantly taken out of the main story to read notes that didn’t add much to my understanding of the characters or the historical background. So it was annoying. Maybe I would have found it more interesting if I was familiar with the book references? Then, when the footnotes became more random, with asides about Dr Voth’s sex life and professional altercations, I thought OK, maybe this is going somewhere. But then the secondary narrative was kind of left dangling with no proper resolution, which was really disappointing. Oh, and when I really could have done with some historical footnotes – like with the history of the Fens – they were nowhere to be seen!
2. The politics. So for me this book read mostly as a vehicle for the author’s political ideas. Which is cool, except I don’t think it’s as radical and progressive as the author seems to think it is (judging by his note in the acknowledgements). Here are some aspects I struggled with:
- Conflation of intersex and transgender narratives. It is strongly suggested in multiple passages that Jack Sheppard is both intersex and trans, and so is Dr Voth the editor. But this is never explored in any meaningful way – there isn’t a single footnote, a single mention of the word “intersex”. This smacks of the “melting pot” approach to LGBTQIA+ identity politics, which in practice means that larger and/or more vocal groups speak on behalf of everyone else.
- The stories of non-white characters are not given much depth. I felt that Bess and especially Aurie Blake were mostly there to propel Jack’s character development (I’m aware that they are usually support characters in the Shepperdiana canon, but making them black/brown in relation to a white Jack makes this really ugh). Bess randomly performs Jack’s top surgery, Aurie facilitates his escape from prison, both of them help save his life in the end. All of this reads very much like a Magical Negro trope: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical.... What motivates them, what do they get out of the relationship with Jack? (OK, Bess gets sex). Aurie’s blackness in particular doesn’t seem to play any meaningful part in the story. In the end it’s revealed that he has supposedly co-authored the “Confessions”, but his voice isn’t heard at all. To me, it felt like Jordy Rosenberg wrote him as a black character for the sake of appearing “woke” and having a “diversity cast”, but he didn’t actually have much to say about the experience of being a black gay man in 18th century London.
- The reveal about the manuscript having been ‘doctored’ by a radical group of left-wing activists bothers me for all sorts of reasons. I’m guessing this has something to do with Foucault’s ideas about the archive – which I’m not very familiar with, so may have misunderstood the author’s intention here. But it kinda felt like Rosenberg was endorsing this practice, in a “transform the past to transform the present” kind of way. And to me there’s a big difference between telling the stories of historically marginalised people (real or fictional), and rewriting history to appease the political sensibilities of the present. Because when the latter is done by well-meaning queer white authors and academics, the result is often not only racist and patronising in its own way, but also blind to its own racism (we are watching Hollywood at the moment, which feels like another prime example of this). OR is Rosenberg aware of this, and is using this plot twist to draw attention to this well-meaning blindness, in a very roundabout and meta way? Mm.
3. The book as a whole felt a little half-baked to me. There were some interesting ideas, but too many loose ends and things that felt sort of sloppy or contrived. I felt like the relationships between the characters in the nested narrative weren’t given room to develop – we see Jack meet Bess and Aurie for the first time, then they’re suddenly in an intense romantic relationship, or the best of friends? Same goes for Bess and Jenny, and even Jack and Wild. The frame narrative about Dr Voth had some interesting moments, but as I said, felt kind of unresolved in the end. The whole 'anti-capitalist proto-feminist pirate community' angle felt like a missed opportunity, as many 18th century pirate societies were in fact more egalitarian and democratic than the order of the day, and I think it could have been interesting to explore - but Rosenberg takes this too far into far-fetched territory, so it becomes too ridiculous to contemplate seriously. Some historical inaccuracies bugged me. Like when Bess is recalling the uprising of the Fen-dwellers, which she supposedly witnessed as a young girl. She talks about how the draining of the Fens was being carried out by Scottish inmates, who joined forces with the Fen-dwellers against the Surveyors. This puts these events somewhere between 1653 and 1658 (when Oliver Cromwell was Lord Protector, and, having defeated the Scots in the 1650 Battle of Dunbar, put the Scottish POWs to work on Fen drainage). So, even if Bess was only 10 at the time, this would make her a sprightly octogenarian in the 1720s, when she first meets Jack. Of course, the “manuscript was doctored by activists” plot device could potentially excuse any inaccuracies and contrivances, and that in itself feels pretty contrived, in a deus ex machina kinda way.
But maybe I’m being too harsh. I’m not really familiar with this genre (speculative historical fiction? metafiction?), nor with the many academic reference points, so could be way off base here.
February 23, 2020
it's a common experience among trans people, especially those of us who read a lot, to start to get frustrated with the knowledge that none of the books we read are really For us.
it's hard to explain because of course not every book you read has to be For You, and in fact it's necessary and preferable to read books that are not explicitly For You because that's how you begin to understand the experiences of people who are different than you-- but at the end of the day, it's very lonely to read stacks of books and know that a lot, if not most, of the authors are ignorant of or even morally opposed to your very existence.
it's even more difficult to explain that it's not always as simple as just going down a list and picking books with trans characters, because most of those books aren't really For us either; they're for cis people who want an easily understood, easily digestible trans narrative to swallow so that they can feel like they've successfully absorbed a story that wasn't For them. even books by trans authors aren't always For us, despite being generally more respectful, usually because the author is desperate to appeal to cis sensibilities in lieu of trans solidarity.
this book is possibly the first book I've read that I knew, without a single doubt, was For Me. this was written by a trans man, for trans people, without any dumbing-down or explanations for cis people. I could go into the hows and whys, try and explain all the things this book made me feel, but I'm not sure I would do it justice. if you're trans, especially transmasculine, please do yourself a favor and read this instead of settling for the single "lgbtq+" shelf on the floor of the barnes and nobles young adult section.
it's hard to explain because of course not every book you read has to be For You, and in fact it's necessary and preferable to read books that are not explicitly For You because that's how you begin to understand the experiences of people who are different than you-- but at the end of the day, it's very lonely to read stacks of books and know that a lot, if not most, of the authors are ignorant of or even morally opposed to your very existence.
it's even more difficult to explain that it's not always as simple as just going down a list and picking books with trans characters, because most of those books aren't really For us either; they're for cis people who want an easily understood, easily digestible trans narrative to swallow so that they can feel like they've successfully absorbed a story that wasn't For them. even books by trans authors aren't always For us, despite being generally more respectful, usually because the author is desperate to appeal to cis sensibilities in lieu of trans solidarity.
this book is possibly the first book I've read that I knew, without a single doubt, was For Me. this was written by a trans man, for trans people, without any dumbing-down or explanations for cis people. I could go into the hows and whys, try and explain all the things this book made me feel, but I'm not sure I would do it justice. if you're trans, especially transmasculine, please do yourself a favor and read this instead of settling for the single "lgbtq+" shelf on the floor of the barnes and nobles young adult section.
June 10, 2021
I almost feel like I’m not smart enough to review this book. Don’t get me wrong, I liked it a lot! But I just don’t think I’m up to the task of pulling it apart for meaning, which it is practically begging you to do. And yet, what I like about it is how unpretentious it is.
Confessions of the Fox is a piece of historical fiction that tells the story of Jack Sheppard, infamous thief and renegade, who is also a folk hero. The book is told in two parts, a frame story involving an academic who has found a manuscript that purports to tell the true story of Jack Sheppard, and which is mostly told in footnotes, and the “manuscript” itself. (Jack Sheppard is based on Macheath, or Mack the Knife, from The Beggar’s Opera and The Threepenny Opera.) The catch here is that both Dr. Voth, our present day character, and Jack are trans men. The author is also trans. It is a story by and about trans people, about transness. It is also extremely meta. The footnotes get rather existential, but I really enjoyed them. Most of the references made are to real scholarship that you can read yourself! This is also a bit of a satire, as there is a plot involving the corporatization of Dr. Voth’s university.
Other people have written much more comprehensive reviews of this book. I'm just happy to say I very much enjoyed this book and will be reading it again.
Confessions of the Fox is a piece of historical fiction that tells the story of Jack Sheppard, infamous thief and renegade, who is also a folk hero. The book is told in two parts, a frame story involving an academic who has found a manuscript that purports to tell the true story of Jack Sheppard, and which is mostly told in footnotes, and the “manuscript” itself. (Jack Sheppard is based on Macheath, or Mack the Knife, from The Beggar’s Opera and The Threepenny Opera.) The catch here is that both Dr. Voth, our present day character, and Jack are trans men. The author is also trans. It is a story by and about trans people, about transness. It is also extremely meta. The footnotes get rather existential, but I really enjoyed them. Most of the references made are to real scholarship that you can read yourself! This is also a bit of a satire, as there is a plot involving the corporatization of Dr. Voth’s university.
Other people have written much more comprehensive reviews of this book. I'm just happy to say I very much enjoyed this book and will be reading it again.
August 13, 2020
Een historische roman die een werkelijk radicaal antikapitalistisch en anti-imperialistisch wereldbeeld verwoordt, laat zien hoe dit onherroepelijk met (trans) lichamen verweven is, de afschaffing van politie en gevangenissen bepleit, Marx’ handelswaar voor zichzelf laat spreken, en dit alles zowaar in een lekker, spannend plot weet te verpakken, is op zijn minst bewonderenswaardig te noemen. Het boek was niet perfect, maar het einde zo overtuigend hoopvol dat dat weinig uitmaakte. Verder wist ik niet van het racisme tegen Aziatische mensen in Londen tijdens de pest en was de parallel met onze grote vriendin corona tamelijk huiveringwekkend. Oh, en ik ben erg verheugd jullie mede te delen dat ik nu ongeveer vijftien 18e-eeuwse synoniemen van pussy ken.
April 7, 2023
if someone were to ask me what my favorite book is i would say this one. if someone were to ask me what my favorite book is i would say Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg. i loved the footnotes. i loved the references. i loved the theory. i loved the two stories at once and their parallels. i loved the never-ending 18th century synonyms for vagina. this book is sexy; it’s witty, clever, thrilling. even though it’s fictional it feels so real and full of life that i was sobbing when it was over.
“Dear reader, if you are you—the one I edited this for, the one I stole this for—and if you cry a certain kind of tears—the ones I told you about, remember?—you will find your way to us.
You will not need a map.”
“Dear reader, if you are you—the one I edited this for, the one I stole this for—and if you cry a certain kind of tears—the ones I told you about, remember?—you will find your way to us.
You will not need a map.”
June 11, 2023
jack's story isn't about his trans identity, it's about his thievery! it's about the man that no prison can hold!
jack sheppard is a badass. he steals with the precision of an engineer. the people around him toast him after a successful heist, love him, and are in awe of his abilities. yet all he truly wants is bess, the prettiest girl around.
this novel is written in the form of 18th century slang and footnotes from a curious student studying jack's confession. how is jack going to escape the gallows? guess you'll have to read about this sly fox.
jack sheppard is a badass. he steals with the precision of an engineer. the people around him toast him after a successful heist, love him, and are in awe of his abilities. yet all he truly wants is bess, the prettiest girl around.
this novel is written in the form of 18th century slang and footnotes from a curious student studying jack's confession. how is jack going to escape the gallows? guess you'll have to read about this sly fox.
April 5, 2019
A promiscuous blend of metafiction, theory, and speculative history that makes you ask different questions, hard questions. I've never felt an 18th century more alive, more queer. And it's what we need right now: not just imagined futures but reimagined pasts.
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April 4, 2024ok. i only read 50 pages of this. to translate, this means i made it past "[i always mean to utilize an attendance book in class but] i’m too scattered and too marxist to actually police my students that way" and surrendered at "though frankly 'constable' when you think about it is a much more indecent word than 'cunt.' for there are certain cases where the latter, at least, is used [italics] (verrrry) lovingly and consensually. the former, never."
i don't usually like to scare quote cringe passages out of context-- are we not all cringe passages out of context-- but i truly don't know that i can sufficiently describe the truly mortifying smugness that permeates this book without providing a sample.
apparently later there's a passage where the footnoter holds off on footnotes during a woman's speech and says it's bcs he doesn't like to interrupt women. ok, thanks. i'm sorry, i'm just gossiping now, i read a summary online, apparently there's also a reveal that lgbtq people over centuries have all been secretly contributing to this manuscript abt a white trans englishman to pass on their ancestral knowledge. i simply wouldn't contribute to this chapbook. i simply think the most radical things don't have to pause to remind you breathlessly how radical they are all the time.
also, i'm sorry hamilton, the 1700s simply were not a sexy time.
i'm not even against footnotes in fiction. i think to use footnotes in fiction successfully u have to be either brilliant or very very funny. i knew bartimaeus. bartimaeus was a friend of mine. senator,
i don't usually like to scare quote cringe passages out of context-- are we not all cringe passages out of context-- but i truly don't know that i can sufficiently describe the truly mortifying smugness that permeates this book without providing a sample.
apparently later there's a passage where the footnoter holds off on footnotes during a woman's speech and says it's bcs he doesn't like to interrupt women. ok, thanks. i'm sorry, i'm just gossiping now, i read a summary online, apparently there's also a reveal that lgbtq people over centuries have all been secretly contributing to this manuscript abt a white trans englishman to pass on their ancestral knowledge. i simply wouldn't contribute to this chapbook. i simply think the most radical things don't have to pause to remind you breathlessly how radical they are all the time.
also, i'm sorry hamilton, the 1700s simply were not a sexy time.
i'm not even against footnotes in fiction. i think to use footnotes in fiction successfully u have to be either brilliant or very very funny. i knew bartimaeus. bartimaeus was a friend of mine. senator,
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