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

5.0

This was a difficult book to read, as everyone who’s read it will know. The elegance and emotional sensitivity of the writing is the only thing that makes the descriptions of the case, and the events of the author’s life, bearable. There are facts about our experiences that we know in our bodies and have to struggle to understand. The instinctive revulsion felt as children at the concept of an execution that propels several of the death row lawyers. The many blank spaces in the author’s memory that she can only understand in her strange reactions— a need to check behind bathroom curtains for a body, a hatred of the color yellow. We are all navigating the constant invasion of the past.