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A review by shieldbearer
The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
3.0
Rating memoirs always feels strange to me, but this is not a pure memoir, this is also a nonfictional account, and it is on those grounds I find fault. I am aware the author says upfront that several events around the events of the Langley trial/murder are composite, compressed or otherwise altered, but frankly I deeply disliked the aspect where the author is clearly ascribing and assuming the thought processes of the real people involved in this. "[y person] MUST HAVE [felt/thought z thing]" got extremely, tediously old. It also got irritating when the author frequently ascribed personalities and descriptions onto people we could get only glimpses from fact. Why is every person we have such glimpses of imagined by the author to be young and naive?? I would much have preferred a straight forward account of all the contradictions and complexities, even if it was more complicated. The writing is beautiful but I couldn't get past the framing.
Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Body shaming, Child abuse, Child death, Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Incest, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Toxic relationship, Violence, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Gaslighting, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail