A review by qu33nofbookz
The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich

2.0

Half fiction, 1/4 true crime story, 1/4 authors open therapy to those who will listen. The author who has been messed up and haunted for pretty much most of her life from sexual abuse by her own grandfather and her family's willingness to cover it up and not talk about it/or punish the guilty party and their own problems of depression and alcohol abuse mixed in with what she perceives as a close parallel to a man serving life in prison. The man is Ricky Langley and he was convicted of molesting and murdering a 6 year old boy. He was sentenced to death then after a retrial and second convection now serves life in prison. She bounces back and forth from Ricky's past, from shortly before he was conceived, how he grew up and his early years compared with her own early years and abuse. Ricky was abused and neglected growing up very poor. The author came from a good and upper-middle class to rich family. Then she relates her struggles of dealing with what happened to her as the family ignores it and her battle with lime disease which her family thinks she is faking, mixed with Ricky's problems with his emerging pedophilia and jail stints and mental health troubles for it. Last she goes over the three trials Ricky had and how with becoming obsessed with this case and writing about it and her past can she let everything go and you will see how her life and his are so similar (she must be mental for thinking so) and that is the end of it all.

In between what she finds out about Ricky's case, his history and her own past her spins fiction about what she doesn't know and just assumes was going on given the facts of his trial, jail history and parents history this is what most likely happened. I'd take most of this book with a huge grain of salt.