Confessions of the Fox

Posted on 17 August 2018 by Jordy Rosenberg

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. Download Confessions of the Fox – kino-fada.fr 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 ac...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, h 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...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 wh 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 ted...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 oneextensively told It s Recently dumped college professor, Dr Voth, discovers the diaries of 18th century master thief Jack Sheppard The novel is Dr Voth s painstaking transcription o...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 histhan lover Bess as well as the erotic and professional wanderings of the academic And also, it s a monstrous ...This 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...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 An experimental alternate history anti colonial prison abolitionist hella queer and ...Normally I attempt to avoid reading plot summaries and reviews too much to maintain some element of surprise, but this one I did check out and it sounded irresistible, something straight out of Sarah Waters realm of queer historical fiction Then again that was probably setting the bar much too high This book does have a lot of the same ingredients queer characters, historical setting, specifically England early 1700s, small crimes, grand love story, adventures, etc , but prepared by a very Normally I attempt to avoid... 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 consider I was lucky enough to win a copy of Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Ros...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...

English
17 August 2018

Jordy Rosenberg