After her father’s death, Wiener finds herself delving into her paternal line - a trail of racism and theft stemming from her great-great-grandfather, colonial “explorer” Charles Wiener….

This was an intriguing exploration of being descended from both a colonial exploiter and a colonised people - how does one resolve two such facets of one’s identity? (Can they be resolved?) And Charles Wiener’s own inner contradiction was interesting, in the sense of his own exclusion and desire to be accepted amongst the French intellectual elites which probably pushed him to go so hard on the exploitation of others.

But I really struggled with the “autobiographical novel” aspect of this one (what exactly does that mean? It sounds like an oxymoron). I found myself constantly wondering what was true vs embellished or outright fictionalised and that turned out to be quite distracting, at the expense of actually paying attention to the story. Since we’re dealing with a real historical figure and real people in the present day, it just…didn’t quite sit right - but if names had been changed, it wouldn’t have really bothered me.

I also wasn’t particularly into all the relationship details. I understand Wiener’s point around decolonising desire and how she thinks of her body as a woman of indigenous descent and darker-skinned than much of her family, but some of the details felt like enforced voyeurism. I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid at any of it in a fictional story by the way, it’s to do with knowing it’s autofiction - I simply have no interest in knowing the author’s intimate relationship details.

Ultimately, I think I’d have enjoyed this more as a straight memoir or, alternatively, a more fictional version with changed names. But in this form, it did not work for me. That said, I really did enjoy the writing, and would read more by Wiener.

A well-written exploration of reckoning with being descended from both colonial exploiter and exploited, but the autofiction aspect proved too distracting for me.