"The Fact of a Body" by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich

 A six-year-old boy is murdered by a paedophile. The author encounters this case while working as an intern for the law firm appealing the murderer's death sentence. The story haunts her because it awakens memories of when she was a child and was abused by her grandfather. 

The narration flips backwards and forwards between the story of the murder and the subsequent trials and the story of the author's own childhood and young adulthood. As usual with American literature - both fact-based and fiction - the narration includes a vast amount of specific detail and this makes the verisimilitude visceral. The ambiguities and uncertainties in the case are brilliantly brought out: there are many discrepancies between the confessions the murderer made; there are moral questions over the behaviour of the neighbour's family with which the murderer was living; the mother of the victim appeals for mercy for the murderer. It's a remarkable story, powerfully told.

Selected quotes:

• "I disembarked into air that was a not wet slap." (Prologue)
• "Each night now what we eat together comes from the garden as we race with bounty, trying to keep ahead of the coming spoilage." (Ch 8)
• "My parents have always loved money, always had the faith that more will appear if they spend it." (Ch 12)
• "Medical bills cost Bessie and Alcide the land they built on and the house they built on it, too." (Ch 15) This has to be the reason why we in the UK don't want the NHS to be replaced by as US-style health system; that and the premise of 'Breaking Bad': that the only recourse for a chemistry teacher diagnosed with cancer is to manufacture illegal drugs.
• "Doesn't seem lonely if it's the best kind of aloneness you've ever had." (Ch 21)
• "Though it is called death row, it is where men live." (Ch 21)
• "The reception area looks like someone set it up long ago in a burst of optimism before succumbing to dust, time, and too much work." (Ch 22)

December 2022; 324 pages

This book, both in its subject matter and in its style, flipflopping between two narratives, reminded me of Dancing With the Octopus by Debora Harding

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God