A book with a traumatic subject matter, which made it rather a difficult read, and for that reason although I tried to finish the book I am afraid I gave up on it.

I confess I couldn't read all of this book. It was simply too harrowing for me. The whole point, I realise, was to examine one's own life and how we reconcile things we've experienced but it was too much.

Wow! A dark and graphic look at murder and abuse. I couldn’t stop reading once I started. The author went into great detail to share this harrowing story. Recommended!

Heart-breaking, thought-provoking, and beautifully written; true crime at its most necessary. I'll read absolutely anything Marzano-Lesnevich writes in the future.

I love buying non fiction reads for our school library and this is one that I will definitely be purchasing. It is important that the students read a range of books on a diverse array of subjects and Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich's amazing memoir was both powerful and incredibly readable. The senior students will definitely enjoy reading it and I think that they'll find it gripping as well as giving them a better insight into the controversial subject matter. I have ordered a copy and look forward to recommending it to our seniors who enjoy non fiction as much as a good novel. An excellent read!

This memoir is flawed but fascinating. As is sometimes the case with true life tales, there are a number of unanswered questions, so anyone expecting a neatly rounded story that explains the peculiar details of the murder case will be disappointed. The writing can be disjointed at times as well, jumping between the author's reminiscences and the case with no fluid transition. Nevertheless, it is a fascinating story, thought provoking and examining the many shades of grey that surrounded the black and white world of law.

Readers should be aware that it discusses child abuse, both in the case described and the author's personal experience, making it a difficult read at times.

Rating 4.5/5

The Fact of a Body for me was a unique reading experience, it is at the same time a true crime novel and a memoir but it doesn’t wholly feel like a non-fiction book, it has this wonderfully effortless storytelling style, that pulled me in in a way that I have only really experienced with fiction before.

The parts of the story dealing with the crime are presented in such a way that means that you know that it isn’t exactly what happened, rather a possibility of what happened. So even though she didn’t know exactly how every detail of every moment played out, the way she described the characters feelings and the events makes it so much more easier to empathise with the turns the story takes. The reader is also given a few scenarios as the blanks are filled in as best they can be.

I really appreciated the dual narrative in this book, the story of the murder is told but is interspersed with what this encounter dug up for the author, the abuse she suffered in her childhood and what impact this had on her life, whilst also asking the question what shapes the person we become. It also allowed for a reprieve of sorts from hearing about the abuse and the details of the case, hearing about her researching and in school broke up the heavier aspects of the book.

The reader is never presented with the details framed in a gruesome way or using shock tactics to highlight how terrible it is, Ms Marzano-Lesnevich gives the facts as they are on record with great sensitivity, but knowing that it is fact is, I think, what makes it so difficult to take in. I also think that by being able to draw from her own experiences helps in a way to explain why certain events may have played out the way they did.

I knew it wasn’t going to be a fast paced book going in however there were points that I felt were a little dragged out. When I first write my notes on this book I thought it was due to the sometimes clunky phrasing or that some of it was a bit repetitive. This is where being lucky enough to go and see Alexandria chat to Val McDermid about the book gave me some extra insights.

There is a case that gets brought up in the book that is used to explain the legal term proximate cause, which I will not be able to explain in any detail because I can’t do it justice, but is essentially if there are many factors in causing something to happen what is the one factor (the proximate cause) it can be attributed to. The repetition in the book was to show how you find different meanings in each of the different causes.

I hope that makes sense, it might not until you read the book, but it really helped me to understand more.

Another thing that I had wondered was that why after having done so much research on the murder, Ricky’s backstory and the subsequent trials that she hadn’t reached out to speak to the people involved. She said that she didn’t want to interview them because she wanted to tell the story of a mind coming to the information and piecing the past together, and when she puts it in that context I think it was definitely the right choice.

The Fact Of A Body is a book I won’t forget in a hurry, it isn’t about what happened because you go into it already knowing who did it, it’s the question of why that draws you in. This book gets you to think about what makes up a person and how our own stories influence what we perceive around us. It’s not always an easy read but it is a compelling one.

‘The Fact of a Body’ interweaves Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich’s personal memoir of childhood sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her grandfather with a true crime story about Ricky Langley who was convicted of murdering and molesting a six-year-old boy in Louisiana in 1992. Marzano-Lesnevich came across Langley’s case at the time he was on death row when she was an intern at a law firm and the harrowing details of his case triggered memories of her own traumatic past.

The title of the book derives from a legal concept Marzano-Lesnevich was taught in her first year at law school: a body has been found but at what point does the explanation for the death begin? Can the story be restricted to the events which occurred immediately before the murder itself or does the answer lie in the wider context such as relevant details of the murderer’s childhood? Marzano-Lesnevich goes back to the very beginning of both stories to explore the circumstances in which Ricky was born as well as her own family history and how it has impacted her.

Marzano-Lesnevich’s personal account is truly devastating to read and inevitably, her story is somewhat more compelling than Ricky’s. While ‘The Fact of a Body’ raises important questions about the nature of memories of traumatic events and Marzano-Lesnevich is upfront about the elements she has fictionalised, I was less comfortable with the narrative embellishments to Ricky’s story including lots of dialogue.

I would recommend ‘The Fact of a Body’ to fans of true crime or for anyone who is still in doubt about how ridiculous the US justice system is.

With more than warranted comparisons to such true crime classics as In Cold Blood and Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil, Alexandria Marzano- Lesnevich’ s powerful, thought-provoking and intensely moving memoir, recounting the darker periods of her childhood, and her fledgling career in  law is one of the best non-fiction books I have encountered for some time. Tracing and examining her own emotional development from a childhood of abuse and family denial, and her involvement as a young lawyer in one of America’s most thorny and haunting crime cases, The Fact Of A Body raises as many questions as it answers regarding crime and punishment, as well as providing the reader with a deep insight into the life of this remarkable woman whose seemingly firm beliefs in the immorality of the death penalty are so roundly challenged and undermined by the retrial of notorious murderer Ricky Langley. As much as this is non-fiction, the author’s lightness of touch, and her powerful and intensely descriptive, scene setting, gives a feeling of fiction to the whole affair, adding to the reader’s engagement and the sheer readability of the book. One of my personal heroes since my teenage years has been English lawyer Clive Stafford-Smith, due to his tireless quest for justice for death row prisoners in the United States, and the author’s own professional involvement with this remarkable man is strongly bound up in the narrative throughout, adding another layer of interest for this reader. I found this an emotional, compelling and utterly fascinating read, and as only a sporadic reader of non-fiction, this had me completely transfixed. Highly recommended.

Wow this is such a powerful book. The empathy the author is able to give the other main character in this book is astonishing. The honesty and oddly everyday nature of the way the author describes being molested by a family member is quite startling, as was the level of betrayal by those who should have protected her. An astonishing book about a very difficult subject

This book, half memoir, half non fiction crime reporting was an interesting and unique style of writing. Jumping between the case in question but also the authors past experiences and how they interconnected really gripped me and I was intrigued how it would conclude. At times there were lulls in the book however my curiosity kept me powering through. Like any book that doesn't have a full conclusion to the mystery, I was left frustrated to understand more about the case and what really happened on the fateful day however overall I really enjoyed this read and would definitely recommend to friends.

I have heard lots about this so was really keen to read it. It made me feel a bit conflicted - I didn't like the way the author imagined people's thoughts and motivations. It's a compelling and devastating story but I wasn't sure about how it was told.

I had such high hopes for this book and i wasn't disappointed. The author paints such a vivid picture and i really enjoyed how she weaved in aspects of her own childhood and life into such an intriguing and emotional case.

The Fact of A Body is a non fiction book that reads like fiction. Which makes it very readable indeed. It is marketed as being both a murder and a memoir because it is while she is a law student researching a murder that Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich is reminded of her own, chilling childhood and buried memories of her paedophile grandfather. For years nobody in her family has spoken about the ordeal Alexandria suffered and I hope that by writing the book she found some catharsis. Fans of real life stories like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil will enjoy The Fact of a Body.

Thanks to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for the opportunity to read and review this fascinating book.

This true-crime/personal memoir mashup is certainly an unusual book, but while the subject material is compelling, I found it to be an awkward and slightly disjointed read. The story jumps around in time a lot, as well as switching between the two stories. The fictionalisation of real-life events is always tricky, but I felt that the author came too close to putting words in another person's mouth - phrases like "she must have felt..." when there really wasn't any evidence of how the person felt. I also struggled with the attempt to draw parallels between the child sexual abuse in her own family and the child sexual abuse and murder perpetrated by Ricky Langley. I was also disappointed by the lack of discussion of the author's feelings on the death penalty - apart from stating when her anti-capital-punishment stance began and a brief description of her primal desire for the death of the murderer when she first sees him on video, this aspect is barely touched on.

Overall an interesting read, but I'm not convinced this deserves the pre-publication buzz that it generated.

Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich starts a summer internship at a law firm which specialises in death row cases, despite the warnings about the criminals she'll have to deal will she jumps at the chance of the job, but then her world is turned upside down when she chances across a case that'll become an obsession. Ricky Langley is facing a retrial for the murder of six-year old Jeremy Guillory and the case becomes hugely triggering for Marzano-Lesnevich as she confronts her own demons and those within her family. This is a book which has drawn deserved parallels with In Cold Blood. The horrific details of the case and Langley's upbringing are interspersed with the author's own traumatic childhood and this book is at points a challenging read which doesn't shirk from its difficult subject matter. As the book goes on the author finds herself questioning her beliefs on the death penalty and is forced to face some unpleasant truths about her family head on. The events in this book wouldn't look out of place in any crime or thriller fiction novel but the author does a fantastic job of never sensationalising, of always describing what happens and the people involved without veering over into melodrama or flinching from the horrible reality. The attention to detail is flawless, any speculation the author makes is covered in the footnotes, and it's a testament to the writing as to just how much is covered in just under 350 pages. This is a book to devour and then reflect on, a fantastic achievement and an important read.

I received a ARC from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

What a courageous and honest writer Marzano-Lesnevich is! What starts out as a 'true-crime' story about the murder of a child, is actually a devastatingly intimate memoir that deals with M-L's own troubled childhood in a home dark with unspoken secrets.

At first glance Ricky Langley, a working-class paedophile and child-murderer, has nothing in common with M-L herself, a clever middle-class girl with a Law degree from Harvard. But a summer internship with Langley's Death Row defence firm kick-starts something deeply uncomfortable in her which expands to cause her to put her whole life into another perspective, uncovering the hidden, eventually speaking the unspoken.

In less emotionally-intelligent hands this could have been clumsy and maudlin but M-L is a deeply intelligent and compassionate writer, who bares her soul in an act of healing and communication.
This reminded me of the books of [author:Olivia Laing|4463840], another writer not afraid to mix the public and the intensely personal. This is harrowing is parts, but a gripping, provocative and thoughtful read.

Let’s start at the beginning – the prologue – I could read a book on this information alone, legal proceedings have always been of great interest to me and Marzano-Lesnevich begins by introducing the concept of cause in fact; in the chain of events that caused an outcome, which event is responsible for that outcome and how do you determine it? As you go on to read her true account, you will often refer back to this notion – cause in fact – and try to determine at which point an intervention could have changed the fate of the murdered child, six-year-old, Jeremy Guillory.

Marzano-Lesnevich has chosen a clever structure in this memoir, she often tells you a piece of information before stating something along the lines of ‘we’re not there yet, first we must address….’, this immediately makes you want to read on. Telling you what’s to come and then immediately detailing the events that came before is a clever device because if you think ‘oh, I’ll read a bit more then stop’ you can’t because she has let slip a piece of information that may change how you feel about what has happened and so you need to continue reading to find out.

You can look at this book from two angles, firstly, that of the case itself, details of the trial along with Ricky’s childhood. Marzano-Lesnevich looks in detail at the proceedings and to a certain extent allows us to feel empathy for those involved. You will wonder if Ricky ‘fell through the net’, was this a man desperately searching for help – will you allow yourself to feel empathy towards him? At the same time, your heart will break for Jeremy’s mother for the loss of her child. And while you may not understand it, you will see his mother stand up and speak out to keep Ricky from death row.

The second angle is Marzano-Lesnevich’s upbringing, this is told in a beautiful parallel to the upbringing of Ricky and when these two angles are weaved together throughout the book you get a powerful, personal and thought provoking account. A powerful look at the nature of humans; being so against the death penalty and then seeing the face of a man found guilty of murder and wanting him to die, Marzano-Lesnevich examines this case in the hope of finding some understanding of what occurred in her own life.

Without a doubt this memoir will stay with you. Marzano-Lesnevich also lists the sources she used to fill in the gaps in her account, while these sources allowed her to write an unbroken account, I appreciate that she shared with us these sources so if you wish to, you can look further into the case.

I highly recommend this book to fans of True Crime and those that like to read memoirs; in these kinds of books, not only do I believe you learn about the people involved but I also believe you learn a lot about yourself:

“What you see in Ricky may depend more on who you are than who he is.”

Non fiction – sometimes (well almost never) I read non fiction. The few times I do make a departure from my comfort zone of “made-up stuff” it has to be for a book that really captures my interest – The Fact of a Body was that book. The synopsis (as outlined above) grabbed me – why would someone so firmly against the death penalty suddenly have such a dramatic change of heart. What could one man have done to shake the fundamental belief of an educated and intelligent young woman that would make her wish him dead? That is the kind of non-fiction story I cannot look past.

Ricky Langley was a paedophile who murdered a young boy and hid his body for several days before his crime was finally discovered and he was arrested and subsequently sentenced to death. The Fact of a Body will explore Langley’s story, his crimes are unflinchingly documented, his motives and behaviour will be considered and it will frequently make for uncomfortable reading.

Langley’s background and the events leading to his conviction will told by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich – a lawyer who travelled to Louisiana to work on death sentence cases during summer recess from Law School. The author tells the reader Langley’s story and cold facts are fleshed out into an absorbing narrative. At times I did feel I was reading a work of fiction such was the level of detail and the recreation of conversations that are used to build up an accurate recreation of events.

Interwoven with the Ricky Langley story is that of the author herself. This is her tale too and Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich will give an equally unflinching account of how her life was shaped. From her first introduction to law, the fascination of arguing cases and the desire to pursue a legal career we also get her personal story. The no spoilers rule if firmly in play here but if you read through the description at the top of the review it should be clear that Langley’s case will cause the author to confront some close-to-home events in her own life.

The Fact of a Body is a compelling read. It is the story of families and the secrets they keep, the struggles they face and it is the story of a man who knows he has a problem which he cannot control, yet was allowed to live and work in a community unchallenged by the authorities until it was too late to prevent a tragic death.

I found The Fact of a Body more unsettling than many thrillers or horror stories I have read. I put this down to knowing that the crimes I was reading about were based on fact – someone died, mistakes were made and the grief we read about were real tears shed by grieving survivors. That said, I was very glad to have read The Fact of a Body as it was such a powerful reading experience. As the blurb said…if you watched and were hooked by Making a Murderer then The Fact of a Body should be an immediate addition to your bookshelves.

The Fact of a Body is one of the most compelling investigations into a true-crime that I have read, perhaps because that isn’t all it is. It is how one crime can have parallels into another, entirely different life. That is how Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich feels and what she sets out to show us with this mix of true-crime and a memoir.
When Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich joins a law firm in New Orleans as an intern, whose work is based on having death sentences overturned, she feels she is about to start the career she is supposed to have. The daughter of two lawyers, she is staunchly anti the death penalty. But all that turns when she watches a video of Rick Langley who has been convicted of killing a six year old boy, Jeremy Guillory. I’m not going to sugar coat it, the crime is awful but what shocks the author most is that she feels so strongly that Rick Langley should die for the crime he committed. She no longer believes what she thought she did and that has consequences on her life.
The real question she asks is why has she changed one of her core beliefs and within this book she carries out a painstaking investigation of not only Rick Langley’s life but also that of Jeremy who was the son of a single mother, pregnant with her second son at the time of the murder. Alongside this we learn more about her own life, growing up with not so much secrets as known facts left unsaid and unexamined. In this book they are thoroughly examined. It is quite clear that the crime or more accurately where the truth lies, is something of an obsession for the author. What she bravely examines within the text is why she feels that way
All three strands of the book are equally hard to read in parts but the writing is both accessible and intelligent. The author’s own story is far from being a misery memoir where the author begs us to feel her pain, instead she shows us how her family chose to deal with the blows life dealt them and the consequences, as she sees them, of those decisions. When she examines Jeremy’s life it is with tenderness for both him and his mother. Given that we know her visceral reaction to hearing Rick Langley’s voice the author writes with care about the man himself. Not to lessen his crime in any way but by delving deeper into his story and the various explanations given to the fateful evening when Jeremy was killed, tries to find the beginning of this man’s story.
Adding to the intelligent feel are some of the points of law as she was taught complete with examples that are relevant to the criminal case which was incredibly useful for those of us less familiar with the US law. Ricky Langley had gone through three separate trials by the time Alexandria was investigating, she had three different trial transcripts and three different videotaped confessions along with DNA evidence, and masses of reports written by different experts. The author herself has to decide which of these truths is the real truth at the same time she dredges her memories from early childhood and tells her truth, which may or may not differ from those of her siblings.
I actually started reading this book after using it as one of my Tuesday Opening Paragraph posts and couldn’t put it aside which I think is testament to just how compelling, if difficult, a read this is.
I’d like to thank the publishers Pan Macmillan for allowing me to read a copy of this book ahead of publication on 18 May 2017. This review is my unbiased thanks to them.