2019/01: Confessions of the Fox -- Jordy Rosenberg

... his confinement became the door inside him between his waking life and something still unwoken, something lying close-packed like a bomb at his core, poised to shiver into a coruscated, glinting shower of—of—of what, he knew not. But there was Something just beyond the door inside him. Some difference within that he did not yet want to know. [loc. 589]

Dr R. Voth ('a guy by design, not birth') acquires a manuscript purporting to be the confessions of the infamous 18th-century criminal Jack Sheppard. Confessions of the Fox is a transcription of the 'mashed and mildewed pile of papers', interspersed with Dr Voth's footnotes. Some of those footnotes are rambling, discursive, personal -- Dr Voth's university is an increasingly intrusive and coldly commercial employer; his neighbour Ursula is fascinated by queer theory -- and others expound upon and explicate the Confessions. In which the canonical persons of 'Jack Sheppard, Thief' and his lover 'Edgworth Bess, Sex Worker' are revealed as something other. Jack's mother, abandoning him to a cruel apprenticeship, tells him to be a good girl: yes, Jack is assigned female at birth. Bess's father, heading for the Fens after being stranded in London, is a Lascar sailor: yes, Bess is a woman of colour. “Between [Bess's] characterization and that of Jack’s assigned sex, what we have here is either the most or the least authentic Sheppard document in existence,” notes Voth. [loc. 542]

Such a reframing could in other hands have been a solemn and poignant exploration of the marginalised Other in eighteenth-century London, but here is an exuberant riot of transgression, transformation, romance and rebellion. Not to mention the marvellous Elixir, formulated by mutineers who've escaped the East India Company, and stolen by Jack from the Thief-Taker General, Jonathan Wild: this Elixir seems an early form of hormone therapy, and does Jack a world of good. But commerce rears its head, of course: like everything -- even Jack, even Bess -- it is a commodity to be bought and sold, a way for others to profit from the labour of the underclass.

I was tremendously entertained by this novel, though suspect that others will appreciate more the academic references and in-jokes (my understanding of queer theory is patchy). That didn't hinder my admiration for the twining of Jack's great adventure with Voth's own narrative -- including his escape from an increasingly draconian University which requisitions his 'improperly utilised leisure hours' (he plays Phone Scrabble) and insists on a transcript, with illustrations, of Sheppard's MS. ("...when I said that I had sent him the missing page of the manuscript, containing an illustration of Jack’s genitalia, what I actually did was Google “waterlogged slug” ... [loc 4661]).

This is a beautifully constructed, vastly enjoyable and splendidly written novel that made me think a lot: I started rereading whilst checking a quotation for this review, and am already seeing more layers. Highly recommended.