Confessions of the Fox - Supernormal Reads

Paperback, 352 pages

Published by One World.

ISBN:: 978-0-399-59228-7

(1 review)

Jack Sheppard and Edgeworth Bess were the most notorious thieves, jailbreakers, and lovers of eighteenth-century London. Yet no one knows the true story; their confessions have never been found.

Until now. Reeling from heartbreak, a scholar named Dr. Voth discovers a long-lost manuscript—a gender-defying exposé of Jack and Bess’s adventures. Is Confessions of the Fox an authentic autobiography or a hoax? As Dr. Voth is drawn deeper into Jack and Bess’s tale of underworld resistance and gender transformation, it becomes clear that their fates are intertwined—and only a miracle will save them all.

Writing with the narrative mastery of Sarah Waters and the playful imagination of Nabokov, Jordy Rosenberg is an audacious storyteller of extraordinary talent.

6 editions

Literaturliteratur reviewed Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg

The fun way to read about propertization

4 stars

Queer thieves, intellectual sex workers, true love, and academic footnotes: this book appeals to many of my interests and lived up to most of my expectations.

What I love about it (apart from all the queer bodice-ripping and 18th century slang) is that it explains how everything and everyone (hormones, fenlands, footnotes, body parts) can be treated as property within capitalism - and suggests how we can rebel against that.

It is an extremely self-conscious novel which makes no attempt to be or sound "natural" or "realistic"; for some readers that might be a problem, but it's integral to the concept (which basically argues that authenticity is elusive or non-existent and not even that desirable anyway).

Why not 5 stars? Firstly, because the "common people" are idealized too much (e.g. when a thief is going to be executed, it seems like the entire proletariat are protesting while the bourgeoisie are …

Queer thieves, intellectual sex workers, true love, and academic footnotes: this book appeals to many of my interests and lived up to most of my expectations.

What I love about it (apart from all the queer bodice-ripping and 18th century slang) is that it explains how everything and everyone (hormones, fenlands, footnotes, body parts) can be treated as property within capitalism - and suggests how we can rebel against that.

It is an extremely self-conscious novel which makes no attempt to be or sound "natural" or "realistic"; for some readers that might be a problem, but it's integral to the concept (which basically argues that authenticity is elusive or non-existent and not even that desirable anyway).

Why not 5 stars? Firstly, because the "common people" are idealized too much (e.g. when a thief is going to be executed, it seems like the entire proletariat are protesting while the bourgeoisie are all in favour, which seems like a simplification). And secondly, because the 18th century language is sometimes careless/anachronistic in a distracting way (e.g. we are suddenly told that someone "did the math") - the author finds a cunning way to explain/justify this late in the novel, but I felt like that was a slight cop-out.

Still, I loved this. And the footnotes are full of references to real books about colonialism, queerness, etc.