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A review by paperbacksandpines
The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir by Alex Marzano-Lesnevich
2.0
I picked up this book because I wanted to know why Marzano-Lesnevich was overcome with the feeling of wanting pedophile and murderer Ricky Langley to die. Though I realized the book was both a murder and a memoir but I wasn't aware of how much of this book was memoir. As I read through the book, I began to understand how Marzano-Lesnevich's childhood experiences contributed to her visceral reaction to Langley.
How Marzano-Lesnevich's family responded to her childhood trauma had a deep and lasting impact on her psyche and I felt very uneasy reading about her family's apparent lack of concern for her emotional well being. They forbid her from bringing up the topic of her experiences with other family members and her trauma exerted itself in many forms and her father even went as far as denying it had ever happened and that she was the only one who ever remembered it. "This is the logic I will never find an answer to, the way in my family a hurt will always be your hurt or my hurt, one to be set again t the other and wighted, never the family's hurt. Is what happens in a family the problem of the family, or the problem of the one most harmed by it? There is a cost to this kind of adversarial individualism."
Honestly, I could have done with a little less memoir and a little more clear answers regarding Langley's story. I can't say I liked this book or that I feel better for having read it. I think there are a lot of other nonfiction books that would have been a more satisfactory read.
How Marzano-Lesnevich's family responded to her childhood trauma had a deep and lasting impact on her psyche and I felt very uneasy reading about her family's apparent lack of concern for her emotional well being. They forbid her from bringing up the topic of her experiences with other family members and her trauma exerted itself in many forms and her father even went as far as denying it had ever happened and that she was the only one who ever remembered it. "This is the logic I will never find an answer to, the way in my family a hurt will always be your hurt or my hurt, one to be set again t the other and wighted, never the family's hurt. Is what happens in a family the problem of the family, or the problem of the one most harmed by it? There is a cost to this kind of adversarial individualism."
Honestly, I could have done with a little less memoir and a little more clear answers regarding Langley's story. I can't say I liked this book or that I feel better for having read it. I think there are a lot of other nonfiction books that would have been a more satisfactory read.