Where to start? This book was heavy, emotional, and I could not put it down. The Fact of a Body dealt with a lot of topics that are kept hush hush. The author jumps back and forth between a murder and her own personal experiences to try and deal with a past that haunts her. Not an easy read, but one that I would recommend for my library.

While scrolling through Twitter I stumbled upon a picture of a proof copy that had an interesting cover, it had no text but only a photograph of a house which made me very curious and immediately interested in it. I went on GoodReads to read the synopsis and I was SOLD. I sadly wasn’t able to get the proof with the house on the cover but managed to get a digital copy of the book with the amazing US cover. This is a really special memoir which still haunted me even after I finished reading it.

You’re out of Law school, you have decided to take on a summer job at a law firm to help defend men accused of murder, you have made this decision with a clear mind but upon reviewing the case video tapes of the man you’re supposed to help defend you freeze and something inside you changes and what comes to your mind now is hate and instantly you want this man to die – this is exactly what happened to the author of this book, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich. At that moment she begins questioning everything that happened in her life, focusing on her past and how it has shaped her as a person as well as reviewing the case more and more and trying to find out the reason why this crime happened. That is basically all you need to know before getting into this book.

‘Grief takes root inside people.’

The story alternates from the past and the present as the author tries to paint a character study of Ricky Langley, his childhood, his adolescence and what drove him to commit this heinous crime. We also get the authors story as she revisists her past and focuses on the things that have left an impact on her today life. I have to say that the way Marzano-Lesnevich makes you feel somewhat empathetic towards Ricky, particularly the way his mind works, is very well done because she doesn’t make him a monster but a human being whose mind and emotional stability are fragile (but still twisted). The authors struggles and the trigger that Ricky Langley pulled into her mind which made her question her past were very raw and honest and they made this story even more gripping. A lot of themes are discussed in this story which I feel like I’ll ruin if I reveal them so go get this book and read it. After I finished reading the book I googled Ricky Langley and seeing a video of him describing his crime made me realise that this story is very real and has made an impact on many lives.

‘I have come to believe that every family has its defining action, its defining belief. From childhood, I understood that my parents’ was this: Never look back.’

This is a haunting story which in a way is very personal and that’s what makes it a compelling read and a book which any true crime/mystery/thriller lover should read.

***Warning: This memoir features child abuse and child molestation which may be a heavy/hard read for some readers.

I would like to thank the publisher (Flatiron Books), NetGalley and the author (Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich) for allowing me to read an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

With the subject matter it addresses, there is just no way for this book to be anything but HARD. It's brutal and difficult the whole way through, and there is never enough time to get comfortable between the hits. Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich has woven together the story of her family and the abuse and secrets that they hid with the story of Ricky Langley and the murder of Jeremy Guillory and the subsequent investigation and trials. Alexandria's life and story first collide with Ricky Langley's when she's presented with video of his trial on her first day as an intern with a law office specializing in death penalty cases, and as someone who has always considered herself staunchly anti-death penalty, she is shocked to find her belief challenged by this case. This book is less about Alexandria grappling with that feeling and coming to terms with it and more about the way she tries to understand what happened and who Ricky Langley is, and along the way reveals her own history and experiences. She makes no excuses for Ricky, she is in no way trying to explain away who he became and what he did. Both the memoir aspect and the true crime aspect of this book are well written, but terribly sad and uncomfortable. Overall, it's a story that will challenge the reader and force them to confront uncomfortable realities.

In The Fact of a Body, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich escavates more than one crime. The first is an adjudicated crime–the murder of six-year-old Jeremy Guillory by Ricky Langley, a neighbor in Iowa, Louisiana who was a convicted child molester. He confesses and is quickly tried, convicted and sentenced to die. The other crime will never be adjudicated. You see, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich and her sister were repeatedly molested by their grandfather, a hidden crime until their four-year-old sister becomes his next victim and innocently explains how she got a $5 bill from her grandfather.

Marzano-Lesnevich’s parents protected their daughters from further molestation, but they still continued to have the grandparents to Sunday dinners, on family holidays, and never spoke of what happened, never told his wife. As Alexandria grew older, her brother asked why she would not talk to her grandfather, utterly unaware of the violence done to her and the continuing violence of erasing the crime.

Imagine then what it was like for the idealist young lawyer, eager to fight injustice and free people from death row, to start her first law internship at the law office representing Ricky Langley. From that moment when ideology met lived experience, she connected her experiences to the murder of Jeremy Guillory and his killer Ricky Langley. She remembers what she was doing on certain days in the Guillory story.

She takes the skeleton of the crime and dresses it with human flesh, raw and painful flesh. She dresses it with compassion and extraordinary empathy, with detail and emotion, research and imagination, it all comes together in a breathtaking story. It is propulsive on one hand, forcing the reader to keep rushing onward, but then it stops on a dime, shocking, repulsing and sending this reader running.

The Fact of a Body is a tough book to read. I had to put it down more than once to read something lighter like a book about the periodicity of atomic radii, something that would not tear holes is my heart. Perhaps the most painful moment was when the author wrote about an earlier victim, a fourteen year old girl whom she imagines may have been a teen romance, a crime of technicality, a mutual love between a teenagers only divided by ages of consent. Except she misunderstood something about that story. Something that had me putting the book down for a full day while I tried very hard not to think about it.

The Langley case was one of those cases that led to new laws. After his murder, Louisiana enacted the first sex offender registry law. Two years later, the Jacob Wetterling Act was passed to mandate sex offender registries across the country. It’s an odd thing as his fate was unknown until last year, so in 1994 there was no knowing at the time if his abductor and killer would have been on a registry. (He would not have been.) Since them, additional reactive legislation has been passed, with good intentions and poor outcomes. Marzano-Lesnevich is honest enough to admit that sex registries do not work, a brave position for people to take publicly, but a position rooted in evidence.

I liked this book far more than someone probably should like a book about child molestation and murder. Marzano-Lesnevich is a beautiful writer who seems able to inhabit people. She describes that land, the people, the scenes vividly. She has seemingly infinite capacity for empathy, finding the humanity in the murderer, finding somewhere deep in her heart, love for her grandfather whose evil acts haunt her life.

This is not the sort of book I usually read. In fact, I never look at the True Crime offerings and new releases. I like memoirs, but most true crime feels exploitive. I do not know why they are written, to obsess over salacious details, to advocate for poorly conceived “reforms”, or to stoke fears. None of those seem a good enough reason to write someone else’s pain into the page, whether the pain of the victim or their family. Somehow, though Marzano-Lesnevich is uncomfortably direct and explicit, particularly about her own experiences, I never once felt there was a prurient interest in the crime–just the opposite, her interest was out of a desire to dig out her pain, excavation not fascination.

It’s a genre I avoid. I never would have requested reading this book if not for the email newsletter that told me just enough about the book to make me curious. I subscribe to a few from Macmillan, so I can’t remember which one specifically directed me to the book, but I have to say, I subscribe to email news from several publishers and it is my favorite way to find new books to read, along with the must-read lists from LitHub and newspapers.

The Fact of a Body will be published on May 16th. I was provided an advance copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Such an excellent book! Both a true crime book and a memoir, the author has truly written a book that encapsulates more than one genre. It is the journey of the case of Ricky Langley and the road to justice for a 6-year-old boy that Langley raped and murdered. His 2 trials were intense and then came the second sentencing. In his first one, he was sentenced to death. In the second one, after much emotions and work, he was sentenced to life in prison. This book is the story of this journey. It is very well written and I highly recommend this book.

It is hard to describe the excellence and the impact of this book. This is a beautifully written, unflinching, haunting book which melds a true-crime novel with the author's personal memoir. It tells the back and current stories of the victim and his family, the murderer, and the author in alternating pieces; revealing the overlaps and commonalities between the lives of these three people/groups. It also shows the inescapable wave-like impact of past generations on future ones.

We are taken along while the facts of the case are disclosed; family histories and secrets are remembered/discovered and laid bare; help is sought and denied; and the past is both hidden and exposed. This author manages to provide a riveting and extensive, factual, relatable accounting of a true crime (a murder), while melding it with the raw impact of the case on her personally.

I can't begin to impart the exquisite way the author has of stating the facts in one sentence or paragraph and breaking your heart with emotional depth in the next. This is a raw, honest, blockbuster book which deserves nothing but the highest praise and recognition. Kudos to the author and publisher for this fine work!

Many thanks to Netgalley and Flatiron Books for allowing me the privilege of reading and reviewing an e-ARC of this book.

Debut author, legal machinations, death row dilemma...this book called out to me. Marzano-Lesnevich tells a tale of her own childhood intertwined with her work as a summer associate on a death row case. Ali grows up in a legal family, both parents as lawyers in New Jersey, in a home riddled with hidden secrets and family dysfunction in some pretty tragic ways. Molested as a young girl by her grandfather, Ali's family remains silent, 'protecting' all parties and sowing seeds of great trauma as Ali grows into adulthood. When faced with a young man found guilty of molesting and murdering a six year old boy, Ali feels the need to delve more deeply into the story, testing her long-held beliefs on the injustice and finality of the death penalty. This story definitely reads more as a memoir than a legal thriller as Ali juxtaposes her own family life with that of Ricky, the convicted felon. It brings up some troubling issues, with scenes that are very difficult to read, yet exposes the need to talk about the aftermath of molestation. At times, I felt the description waxed on for too long, and details were given that were not relevant to the story; I would have liked the editing to be a bit tighter, to create more tension at times. Overall, it is a solid first outing from an author that should definitely continue to write.

I did enjoy reading the story of Rickey Langley but I did have a couple of problems with the book. The author's attempt to compare her own story with Rickey's hindered the flow of the narrative. Even though I could see the connections that she was making with two, they never really seemed to fit together. I often found myself being annoyed while reading when the story of Rickey and Jeremy was interrupted by her own. It started to be an unwanted intrusion in the narrative. I also found Mariano-Lesnevich's imaginings of the thoughts and feelings of some of the actors in this story to be incredibly unnecessary and presumptuous. Clearly, we can never know what someone else is thinking and feeling so by doing so it just cheapens and disrespects the human beings described, even if this was never the intent.

4.5/5 ⭐️ Wow wow wow. This book was a) extremely well written b) incredibly subtle yet open c) both heartbreaking and intriguing. I requested to read this because it seemed like it would be a riveting true crime book, but it is so much more than that. It's also a memoir, it's about obsession, it's two real life stories colliding and I just really really loved the authors ability to turn a phrase. If she has other books, I will definitely be reading them. Will be recommending this to lots of other readers for sure!

I want to tell you that this book is compelling, well written, powerful, and thought-provoking, which it is, but it is also so much more, and I find myself grappling for the right words.

The true crime aspect of this book is written like the best suspense novel, with the kind of depth and feeling you don't often find in this genre. The author handles the subject and all the people involved with unexpected tenderness, turning them over and examining them with compassion and an honest need to understand. She never exploits the victim or demonizes the killer. She doesn't look for excuses, only reasons.

Interspersed throughout, the author tells her own story. We go with her, deep into this dysfunctional family that works so hard at appearances. We feel her confusion, fear, and disconnect. We learn why Ricky Langley's case gets under her skin and festers, and how chasing his story brings closure for her own past.

Within these pages, the author shows us the truth of a world clouded with shades of gray. Our legal system in particular likes to frame issues with a clear good guy and bad guy, but rarely is anything so simple. And sometimes we find forgiveness in the most unexpected places.

Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich has written a stunning book in The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir. It's both the story of a murder and an account of the author's own life.

During an internship at a law firm, Marzano-Lesnevich once helped defend accused murders. But as she began to research convicted murderer/pedophile Ricky Langley's case, she found herself hoping he'd get the death penalty--and she began to see parallels in her own troubled past.

The author worked on this book for a decade, eventually realizing that even the monsters among us may --may, certainly not always--merit some measure of forgiveness or, at least, understanding.

This book is extremely well-written and atmospheric. It's also gripping and shocking, and details of Langley's crimes against children will be too much for sensitive readers. While I admire the author's craftsmanship, I had to stop reading about the unspeakable acts unleashed upon the youngest, most innocent members of our society. This is a haunting story that will stay with you. .

Incredibly sad, yet filled with hope, the beautiful writing in The Fact of a Body engulfed me. Ricky's and the author's stories were equally impactful. Good questions were asked. Answers were few. And, that's okay. It's that kind of book.

What is offered here is my interpretation of the facts, my rendering, my attempt to piece together this story.

As such, this is a book about what happened, yes, but it is also about what we do with what happened. It is about a murder, it is about my family, it is about other families whose lives were touched by the murder. But more than that, much more than that, it is about how we understand our lives, the past, and each other. To do this, we all make stories.

It's hard to review this book without giving away too much of what makes it special. Because it really is a special read, different from anything else in any of the genres it straddles.

The premise is that author Alexandria, then a law student deeply invested in fighting against the death penalty, accepts an internship in Louisiana at a firm defending capital punishment cases. There she encounters the case of Ricky Langley, a man whose death sentence was commuted to life in prison. Testifying in his defense in this decision, hoping to sway the jury with an act of magnanimous sympathy, was the mother of his six-year-old victim.

Confronted with this emotional, morally wrenching trial, Alexandria is forced to reconcile with her own complicated past. Ricky's crimes of child molestation hit home very personally with her.

Her involvement opens up wounds she's never completely healed, and causes her to question some of the most basic foundations she's established in her education, career, even personal beliefs: I came because my ideals and who I am exist separately from what happened in the past. They must. If they don't, what will my life hold?

Chapters alternate: first Ricky's story, including his childhood with family tragedy and struggles, attempts to seek help for pedophilia, and his desperate striving for a "normal" life of adult independence; then Alexandria's story, her haunting childhood, both mysterious in what she doesn't understand and horrifying in what she does, a troubled family gone silent on what matters most, eating disorders, and finally enrollment in law school to fight against the death penalty, leading her to Louisiana and dealing with the fact that Ricky Langley murdered his six-year-old neighbor, Jeremy Guillory, and someone has to defend him.

A constant theme, woven throughout every story and interaction, is the faultiness of memory, how much we depend on it to build ourselves and who we are, and how we need it to move forward from the past, but how it simultaneously fails us. Sometimes when we most rely on it.

The story is incredibly, brilliantly layered. I already realize how difficult it is to write a memoir combining an author's story with one unrelated to them that they happen to be very interested in (for a less perfectly done example, see: Is there Sense in the Senseless?) But all the right connections are made here, with a captivating literary style to make it un-putdownable to boot.

Because of legal skirmishes, because of fights over motions and venues, because the swift wheels of justice are in fact creaky and slow and no one can identify whether they are justice at all, Ricky's case will take years to resolve. Which gives me time to arrive in Louisiana.

With this distance, Alexandria can parallel the events of her own life with what transpired in Ricky's crime and case at the same time. It's remarkably well-crafted. It puts the Chekhov's Gun principle to work in the best way: every element serves a purpose, every story and segue comes back around.

The law - with each side's relentless pursuit of one story - has never known what to do with this complicated middle ground. But life is full of it.

She comes back to this idea again and again: people and situations cannot be only one thing or another, good or evil, true or false, black or white. The gray area is massive, and it's where so much of ourselves and our stories lie. Finding a reckoning with this is key to her story and her ability to do her work, and on a greater scale to so much of how we process our lives, our interactions with others, and their treatment of us.

There are people who molest and kill children, and sometimes the mothers of their victims forgive them. Is that right? Is that justice? Are they monsters who deserve to die, who can change our minds about punishments that we otherwise staunchly oppose? Can you forgive someone who hurt you like that, when you were a vulnerable child? She grapples with these questions on such a personal level and with so much grace that the end result is nothing short of masterful.

When a lifeline comes, you don't evaluate whether it's the right one. You just grab for it, and hold on.

She writes that in reference to a specific situation, an anecdote from her younger years. But it could apply to Ricky's case, to this capital punishment case that she found herself working on, that threw open the curtains on the past she'd never fully dealt with. As soon as she heard the basic details of Ricky's crime, she knew it'd be gut-wrenchingly hard to deal with, to even learn about, and it absolutely was (it should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway - it's hard to read this stuff. If it wasn't such a completely exquisite book, this might be too stomach-churning to process. It still is that, no mistaking, but she's able to pull such lessons and meaning from tragedy. It softens the blow; this happens, disgusting as it is, but I've never seen it picked apart and worked through on a level like this.)

This terrible case, fished out of the past when Langley gets a second shot at life, really did become a lifeline for her, a way to come to terms with her childhood and to make sense of a lot of the ugliness in the world, thus giving her a much-needed understanding. Sometimes even the worst of circumstances can come together and result in something meaningful.

Two very painful stories, some beautiful writing.
At moments I felt uncomfortable about the way the author was using the twin narratives.. Her accomplishment and skill -- her artfulness in relating her own experience to those of Ricky and Jeremy -- somehow worked against the absolute raw horror of what she was describing.
And yet of course she has every right to process her experience in the way she needs to. I feel uneasy even expressing a reservation; it's a tricky one.