The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir by Alex Marzano-Lesnevich (Epub)

Description

Before Alex Marzano-Lesnevich begins a summer job at a law firm in Louisiana, working to help defend men accused of murder, they think their position is clear. The child of two lawyers, they are staunchly anti-death penalty. But the moment convicted murderer Ricky Langley’s face flashes on the screen as they review old tapes―the moment they hear him speak of his crimes — they are overcome with the feeling of wanting him to die. Shocked by their reaction, they dig deeper and deeper into the case. Despite their vastly different circumstances, something in his story is unsettlingly, uncannily familiar.

Crime, even the darkest and most unsayable acts, can happen to any one of us. As Alex pores over the facts of the murder, they find themself thrust into the complicated narrative of Ricky’s childhood. And by examining the details of Ricky’s case, they are forced to face their own story, to unearth long-buried family secrets, and reckon with a past that colors their view of Ricky’s crime.

But another surprise awaits: They weren’t the only one who saw their life in Ricky’s.

An intellectual and emotional thriller that is also a different kind of murder mystery, THE FACT OF A BODY is a book not only about how the story of one crime was constructed — but about how we grapple with our own personal histories. Along the way it tackles questions about the nature of forgiveness, and if a single narrative can ever really contain something as definitive as the truth. This groundbreaking, heart-stopping work, ten years in the making, shows how the law is more personal than we would like to believe — and the truth more complicated, and powerful, than we could ever imagine.

User’s Reviews

Review Audible’s Best of the Year 2017Bustle’s Best True Crime Books of 2017LitHub’s Best Crime Books of 2017BookRiot’s Best Books of 2017New England Book Award 2017 FinalistEntertainment Weekly “Must” List and Best Books of the Year So FarReal Simple’s Best New Books Guardian Best Book of the YearLambda Literary Award Finalist “A memoir/true-crime hybrid that stands up to the best of either genre, and will linger in your mind long after the last page.”―Entertainment Weekly “Marzano-Lesnevich, in her performance of hybridity ― “A Murder and a Memoir” ― is only doing what the best memoirists do: creating a book of fact and body,and speaking, in all their discord, as mother, father, and child.”― LA Review of Books“This is a nonfiction book you could give up novels for… Intertwines a riveting true crime story with a brave memoir, reminding us that facing the truth is our only option.”―Redbook“Utterly remarkable. It isn’t just that the writing can be beautiful… it isn’t just her coruscating honesty, it is that she understands how very partial the stories we tell ourselves are: the story of themselves that parents choose to tell their children as much as the stories that defence and prosecuting counsels create about events and people. Stories, she sees, are both essential and treacherous… Heroically accomplished.”―The Times of London “There are echoes of In Cold Blood in this haunting story…A gothic mixture of memoir and true crime, The Fact of a Body is full of secrets that don’t want to stay buried, that are forced to the surface despite all attempts to keep them submerged… Bold, disquieting… True crime that feels true.”―The Sunday Times of London “Dream-stippled prose, at once sharp with beauty and lush with horror.”―The Boston Globe “The superb writing and story-telling keep luring you back. Marzano-Lesnevich writes with a beautifully deft one-two-three punch of grace, power and raw emotion.”―The Buffalo News “This book is a marvel. With unflinching precision and immense compassion, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich peels apart both a murder case and her own experience to reveal how we try to make sense of the past. The Fact of a Body is equal parts gripping and haunting and will leave you questioning whether any one story can hold the full truth.”―Celeste Ng, author of the New York Times bestselling Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere“A fascinating hybrid of true crime and memoir, The Fact of a Body is intricately constructed, emotionally raw, and unflinching. Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich has written a gripping meditation on memory, justice, and the limits of empathy.”―Tom Perrotta”The Fact of a Body is unlike any murder story I’ve ever read, a masterpiece of both reportage and memoir, a book that could only be written by an author with Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich’s staggering gifts: a relentless reporter with a law degree from Harvard, a poet’s understanding of the cadence of a line, and a novelist’s gift for empathy. Walter Benjamin famously said that all great works of art either dissolve a genre or invent one. This book does both, and its greatness is undeniable.”―Justin St. Germain, author of Son of a Gun”The Fact of a Body is remarkable act of witness, an anatomy of silence and the violence it abets, a book of both public and private accountings. Rejecting the false comfort of certainty, it confronts the inadequacy of all our tools for fathoming not just unforgivable crimes, but the baffling, human grace that can forgive them. This is a profound and riveting book.” ― Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You”The balancing act here performed between autobiography and journalism, documentary and imagination, witnessing and reckoning, the tender and the terrible, is shrewd and graceful. In the hands of a lesser human or writer, it could have all fallen apart; instead, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich has given us an exquisite and exquisitely difficult work of art that makes a fierce claim on our attention, conscience, and heart.”― Maggie Nelson, author of the NBCC award-winning Argonauts”Haunting…impeccably researched…Her writing is remarkably evocative and taut with suspense, with a level of nuance that sets this effort apart from other true crime accounts.”―Publishers Weekly, Starred Review“An accomplished literary debut…an absorbing narrative about secrets, pain, revenge, and, ultimately, the slippery notion of truth…A powerful evocation of the raw pain of emotional scars.”―Kirkus”Compulsive, eloquent and profoundly troubling. One of those rare books which embrace the genuine complexity of life.”― Mark Haddon, bestselling author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time“The writing is superb and gripping…a moving must-have.”―Library Journal, starred review“Surprising, suspenseful, and moving…A book that defies both its genres, turning into something wholly different and memorable.”―Booklist, starred review“Haunting… Marzano-Lesnevich digs into one case that begins to feel oddly familiar, and eventually is forced to confront her understanding of justice, forgiveness, and truth.”―BuzzFeed“THE FACT OF A BODY is excellent. So gripping and fascinating.”―Sophie Hannah, New York Times bestselling author of The Monogram Murders“Suspenseful and spellbinding.”―BustleAudible Best Books of the Year (So Far)

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ First, I’m disturbed by so many bad reviews of this book, reviews that are clearly based in a lack of understanding of genre. This book is NOT A TRUE CRIME book. Period. If you’re looking for that, don’t buy it or read it. So many people talk about how it doesn’t move quickly, or how do the two stories connect (they do, for thoughtful readers, and the writer makes that so evident that I can only assume some reviewers either didn’t really read the book carefully or simply ignored the clear connections the author is making. Her entire point here is that through exploring the horrible death of a boy, she learns to explore her own trauma.) I have no interest in “true crime” myself, which has, to me, always felt ugly and voyeuristic: people reading about other people’s pain for entertainment. Other people might feel quite differently about it, but that’s my take. This book does explore an only tangentially connected case, a murder case that author first encountered as a law intern. The case is a way for her to explore her own trauma and history, and she does both exceptionally well.What she does well: this is probably one of the best representations of PTSD and the effects of childhood trauma from sexual abuse that I’ve ever read. It is so well done, in fact, that I had to put it down several times, so content warnings for those who have survived similar trauma: this book is very difficult to read at times. That said, reading through it, sometimes tense in my chair, I started to understand my own reactions, even the reactions I was having as I read it. I think others who have suffered trauma, especially sexual abuse as a child, will find much of value in this book, even as it is difficult. Also, I did not want to have sympathy for the murderer in this book. As the author clearly states, neither did she. She wanted him to die. I did too. And yet, she manages to do something I certainly could not: she explores his life in obsessive detail and she presents a complex picture of a man who did horrible horrible things. And yet, she makes him human. She tries, also to do this with her grandfather, and I think it is clear that part of the book is about exploring what it means to be a person who could do this sort of thing to a child. She has no answers for us. There are no answers. But her strength and tenacity in trying to unravel why these things happen is amazing.Yes, the book is quite detailed, thoughtful, working often on a metaphoric level. It is a literary book. A memoir. It means to do that. There were times I wondered at the sheer level of detail, but as a reader and writer I also appreciated it: the writer was also quite clear on when she was imagining things (such as putting the killer’s mother in a housedress of the style her own grandmother wore), and when she took information from sources she had seen. Other than the level of detail, which sometimes even put me off, and I generally like it, I have no complaints: this book was intelligently written, carefully and beautifully structured, and in the end, terribly human. I am in awe of this writer who could manage to stick with this investigation into the life of a man that most of us don’t want to think of at all–a convicted pedophile and child killer. But here’s the thing: if we stay silent (as some reviews have suggested), then other children get hurt. If we stay silent, we never have a hope of understanding how someone comes to do these terrible things, and without understanding that, how can we ever stop it? Certainly what we are doing now is not working–children are abused every day. Some of us have the strength and courage to eventually tell our own stories. And some, like this amazing author, have the courage to tell both her own story and the story of an abuser (welll, two in her case). I applaud her, and difficult as this book was for me to read–and it was–I feel I am further along on my journey of dealing with childhood sexual abuse from reading this book.Thank you to the author. You have really done something amazing with this book.

⭐ The writing is exceptional and slowly, as I got really into the book, I discovered that the subject was one in which I, as I am sure many others do, have a very difficult time reading. The author has woven her own story about having been molested as a child, by a family member, alongside a true crime story that she researched as a young law student, about a man, who was a pedophile, involved in a murder.The two stories are so intense, that although, both hard to read, I became engrossed in the reactions of her family as well as the town’s, to this criminal, his family’s as well as the length that the trials went on, and on.The book is beyond a memoir. It combines true crime, with the author’s imagined scenarios of what went on in various courtroom settings during the trials and how she follows this man’s crime as well as the victim to understand what was done to her, and ultimately to free herself of her haunting past.It is brave, scary, revealing, and a look into a world that you would otherwise not know. I commend her for her diligence, for confronting her family, for writing this book, for having the courage to explore such a difficult subject that must have been painful with every single piece of research that she did and every single word that she wrote. This book will leave you thinking about hard issues about our legal system, mental health treatment, the death penalty, and familial responsibility.To read about other people’s situations that you might otherwise never know, despite their outward appearance, their present success, is eye-opening. To know what they have overcome and how they have done so, is remarkable.

⭐ It felt like a stretch to connect these two stories, and the effort of doing so was tiring to this reader. i skipped over a lot of it just to finish the book..The author repeated herself, sometimes even word-for-word. Her sentence structure was awkward and actually grammatically incorrect at times. Her descriptions did not paint any pictures for me, and I found myself having to re-read sentences to try and understand what she was describing.I did not like the structure of the book. Moving forward and back in time, and between two stories, can work, but this book was inconsistent and clumsy. I truly wonder about the editing when I read something like this.This was not a satisfying read on any level.I give it two stars merely for the tough subject matter addressed.

⭐ Fascinating and elegantly written book. The author drives her story of child abuse and pedophilia from the perspective of both her personal experience with her uncle and the famous, true case of the murder of a child in Louisiana by Ricky Langley. Ms. Marzano-Lesnevich skilled writing as she moves between the 2 stories is never jarring and the kaleidoscope of pain that she uncovers is incredibly brave as she confronts her own abuse as a child. Her approach to the case of Langley is from her perspective as a lawyer on one hand and the sensitivity as a victim on he other.In some circles much as been made of the authors embellishment of the narrative. Ms. Marzano-Lesnevich has filled in, to some extent, the Langley case story where there was no court records but she has done so with great care and complete transparency so I did not find this problematic in the context of this book and the story she was telling. The unique perspective and artfulness she brings to the story as both attorney and victim is so compelling as to make these issues seem slight in comparison.

⭐ I absolutely love this book and wish I could give it the ten stars it deserves. I couldn’t put it down until the last page was turned. I love how Alexandria writes….her descriptions, emotional verbiage and her ability to make me feel like I was inside the story, watching everything over her shoulder. The topics were painful and difficult to read and even imagine living through, but the presentation was thoughtful and definitely made me rethink my stance on the legal system, the death penalty, and the tough topics this book covers. I could relate to Alexandria on a personal level and her emotional journey due to the horrific experiences she had as a child. So much of this book made me think long and hard about what I thought I believed or understood about pedophiles and how the legal and mental system works. The Fact of a Body stayed with me long after I closed the back cover and I imagine it will do so again and again for the rest of my life.I have a large library of books that I treasure, but a few are what I refer to as my selfish books, which will never be lent to anyone, simply because they are far to special due to the way they touched my mind, heart, and soul. Fact of a Body is definitely one of them. I will highly recommend this book to everyone and I will buy this book as a gift for friends and family who I know will appreciate Alexandria’s amazing writing, but I will remain selfish with my copy. It is that special.Buy this book, find a comfortable chair or quiet corner and prepare to stay there until you finish reading, because you will not want to stop reading until the end. Then prepare to have the story invade your mind, because it will make you think and even rethink what you might already believe about the legal system and those who are tangled up in it.

⭐ The writing was very good. However, I found, the message in the book was incredibly disturbing. The logical inference of the story is that being raped is worse than being murdered. The entire story compares a child who was molested and murdered to a child who was molested as if rape was the most horrible crime committed. The mother of the murdered child agreed to assist in saving the perpetrator after he swore he did not molest the child. The murder was, evidently, just something that happened along the way to the real crime.The father and son suicide is explained because the father may have been a molester. Therefore, he took his life and his son’s because….he may have molested him?This builds on the idea that being raped is so shameful it is better to die than admit to such an occurrence. Mercy killings utilize this fallacy. The girl’s family must kill the rapist and his victim because of the horror brought on the victim and her family. She would not be able to live with the shame.This is a very useful tool in keeping the silence. Perhaps the author was able to navigate through the mistruths and come out whole. I am glad for her recovery. However, I believe passing on these victim shaming messages is detrimental to sharing truths that are better brought to light and dismantled.

⭐ This book is stunning, shocking, beautifully written, and raises very difficult, very important questions about how to, as a victim and as a society in general, deal with the perpetrators of child abuse. They committed a horrible crime and at the same time are also – sometimes beloved – family members to someone, and often victims of crime themselves. There is no easy answer, but one way the law and afflicted families move on is by telling a story that emphasizes some aspects and neglects others. The book unravels the unfolding and the stark, painful consequences of this process by going back and forth through time and enmeshing two stories, one autobiographical, one based on a true crime case in Louisiana. I could not put down the book. The author has an amazing way of making the moment viscerally tangible, visible, even smellable, yet, through a writing style that seamlessly switches between acute immersion in the scene to a reflective and predictive “fly-over” perspective, connects each moment to its past and future at the same time.

⭐ I have never read so many made up lies in my life. As part of Jeremy’s family, my question is why did you not contact anyone of us?I read it but never will I tell anyone it is worth reading. And yes I will let them know it is full of lies.

⭐ This book, the story of a young woman for whom a legal case during an internship turns painfully personal, is stunningly well written. The author skillfully intertwines the story of a murder by a pedophile with her own experience of sexual abuse within her family. Her treatment of the murderer and his family, the child-victim and his family, and ultimately her own family with its terrible silences, is deeply empathetic. She exposes the flaws inherent in the legal system–the impossibility of being completely impartial, primarily–in a compelling and elegant fashion.This is not a book for the squeamish, the faint of heart, or someone looking for a light read. But anyone who has experienced similar trauma may, as I did, find it deeply inspiring. I feel it should be required reading for law students, especially those who–like the author at the start of her story–work with death penalty cases.Did I mention that it’s wonderfully written? Other memoirists could learn much from this book.

⭐ This book is powerful. The author beautifully crafts her own memoir and a murder story together. They are not directly related, but the connections she makes are life-changing. And, it was pivotal for me as well. I realized how callous I had become toward criminals, never pondering for too long about the possibility of a tragic childhood, they themselves being victims. I was convinced they bitterly chose their life of crime and strategically planned their strings of offenses. That may often be the case, but these stories together made me realize that there is often more. And, whether we know it, or not, we bring who we are and where we have been, into every decision we ever make. Even when evidence is there before us and it plays a part in our decision, the bigger catalyst is our own personal experiences. The stories might be hard to stomach, but the writing is lovely.

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