Catherine Lacey's Provocative Novel in Disguise

The first thing that you notice about Catherine Lacey's new novel is the lack of a determiner. Nouns float, unhooked from any article. I found myself habitually inserting "The" in the title when the book came up in conversation, that brief sound of specificity, the most common word in the English language and the most wishful. Darkness lifts to reveal a second, nested title page, for a slightly different book: "Biography of X," by C. M. Lucca. Both title pages mention the same publisher, Farrar, Straus & Giroux.