In 1969,Jane Mixer,a first-year law student at the University of Michigan,posted a note on a student noticeboard to share a lift back to her hometown of Muskegon for spring break. She never made it: she was brutally murdered,her body found a few miles from campus the following day.
The Red Parts is Maggie Nelson's singular account of her aunt Jane's death,and the trial that took place some 35 years afterward. Officially unsolved for decades,the case was reopened in 2004 after a DNA match identified a new suspect,who would soon be arrested and tried. In 2005,Nelson found herself attending the trial,and reflecting with fresh urgency on our relentless obsession with violence,particularly against women.
Resurrecting her interior world during the trial - in all its horror,grief,obsession,recklessness,scepticism and downright confusion - Maggie Nelson has produced a work of profound integrity and,in its subtle indeterminacy,deadly moral precision.
Publisher: Vintage PublishingISBN: 9781784705794Number of pages: 224Weight: 159 gDimensions: 198 x 129 x 14 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'A harrowing but clear-eyed examination of crime's emotional fallout'- David Nicholls
'Maggie Nelson's short,singular books feel pretty light in the hand... but in the head and the heart,they seem unfathomably vast,their cleverness and odd beauty lingering on... her work is blazingly intimate'- Rachel Cooke,Observer
'Powerful and searingly honest'- Guardian
'Remarkable. I'm still reeling from its exhilarating brilliance'- Claire-Louise Bennett
'A book-long riff on the first-person essay that Joan Didion built... Nelson eschews tidy resolution. She argues that stories are by nature imperfect - and yet she also shows us how they can become totally worthwhile'- Time Out
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