Hi Steemians!
Back with a book review today, this time for The Fact of a Body: A murder and a memoir, a memoir and true crime novel by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich.
This was one of the most intense and haunting stories I've ever read. It's about a lawyer coming to terms with the sexual abuse she suffered as a child, as well as questioning her own convictions regarding the death penalty when she is confronted with the reality of getting a pedophile off death row. It's about dealing with your past, working to see a fuller picture, and realizing that no one person is all good or all bad. That the law and often we as humans like to see things in black and white, when they are mostly neither.
This book must have been incredibly hard to write, considering how hard it is to read as someone who has had no personal experiences to relate this to. Marzano-Lesnevich goes into excruciating detail about her own abuse and interweaves her own tale with that of Ricky Langley, who murdered and molested a six-year old boy called Jeremy. She examines Ricky's past as well as her own and tries to find a conclusion to her own story.
What stands out about this book is its ability to showcase how in many cases there is no one objective truth. Yes, Ricky was a child molester and a murderer, but he also sought help many times and was denied that help just as often. He comes from a more than broken home and was possibly molested as a child himself. Does that excuse his actions? In no way, shape or form. But it's a story that also deserves telling. Our stories are never independent of our actions.
I went into this book believing that child molesters and pedophiles are truly the worst kind of human there is. I still believe that. But through this book, written by someone who was herself a victim to this horrendous crime, I was made to sympathize to a certain extent with one.
If you feel like you're at all capable of reading about such a hard topic, I definitely recommend this book. I think it's important that stories like this are out there, that they're not swept under the rug. And in telling, they possibly become more bearable to those who experienced them.
Have you read The Fact of a Body, or would you like to? Let me know!
Happy reading!
ivymuse