Selected Radio and Podcasts:
Interview with Pamela Paul for the New York Times Book Review Podcast
Interview with NPR’s “The Reading Life” with Susan Larson
Interview with WYPL’s”Book Talk”
Interview with “First Draft” on Aspen Public Radio
Interview with James Scott for the TK Podcast
Selected Press:
“A memoir/true-crime hybrid that stands up to the best of either genre, and will linger in your mind long after the last page.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Art that both entertains and challenges us to look at very unpleasant truths — even when it poses disorienting questions about the nature of truth itself — is always more vital than art that seeks to comfort, to silence, to bury. So if The Fact of a Body ends up making readers question just what a fact is, maybe that’s about as useful as a book can be in today’s world.”
—Los Angeles Times
“A true crime masterpiece.”
—Vogue.com
“Powerful… with this book, she lays it bare.”
—New York Times Book Review
“At once sharp with beauty and lush with horror….searching, searing.”
—Boston Globe
“This is a nonfiction book you could give up novels for…she intertwines a riveting true-crime story with a brave memoir, reminding us that facing the truth is our only option.”
—Redbook
“Complex and challenging…pushed the boundaries of writing about trauma.”
—New York Times
“The superb writing and story-telling keep luring you back. Marzano-Lesnevich writes with a beautifully deft one-two-three punch of grace, power and raw emotion.”
—Buffalo News
“A storytelling experience unlike any other before it…Marzano-Lesnevich’s unparalleled prose and unflinching examination of the facts we know and the stories we never will make for a darkly disarming debut.”
—Oxford Citizen
“If In Cold Blood is the beginning of the genre, then Alexandra Marzano-Lesnevich’s The Fact of a Body is a next stage of its evolution. Marzano-Lesnevich merges her reportorial and novelistic impulses into a book that bursts with empathy and finely researched detail. With elegant and lyrical prose, she investigates her childhood with the same scrutiny that she uses to research her subject, a man charged with murder, and renders his biography as thoughtfully as her own. What emerges is part memoir, part reportage, and part fiction.”
—The Rumpus
“Suspenseful and spellbinding.”
—Bustle
“Whatever you seek in The Fact of a Body, you won’t be able to turn away.”
—WBUR’s The ARTery
“Haunting… Marzano-Lesnevich digs into one case that begins to feel oddly familiar, and eventually is forced to confront her understanding of justice, forgiveness, and truth.”
—BuzzFeed
“Compelling…meticulous and gripping.”
—Curve
“Stunning…surprising and deeply unsettling.”
—LA Review of Books
“A rarity in literature: a true-crime masterpiece in which the author’s own past is juxtaposed with the “real” victim and criminals, each life unfolding as the pages turn…In the literary mix are also love, coming out, family, booze, neglect, and deeply disconcerting questions about truth and justice and forgiveness that stick with you long after you put the book down.”
—The Advocate
“Brilliantly written.”
—Lowell Sun
“For fans of S-Town and Serial.”
—Louisiana Life Magazine
“A once-in-a-lifetime reading experience…This is the kind of work that asks an essential question: where do our stories begin?”
—Ploughshares
“Haunting…impeccably researched…Her writing is remarkably evocative and taut with suspense, with a level of nuance that sets this effort apart from other true crime accounts.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Surprising, suspenseful, and moving…A book that defies both its genres, turning into something wholly different and memorable.”
—Booklist, starred review
“The writing is superb and gripping…a moving must-have.”
—Library Journal, starred review
“An accomplished literary debut…an absorbing narrative about secrets, pain, revenge, and, ultimately, the slippery notion of truth…A powerful evocation of the raw pain of emotional scars.”
—Kirkus
“Unusual and riveting…Marzano-Lesnevich’s triumph is in the way she simultaneously tells her story and Langley’s, showing how in both cases the past haunts the present, and how facts, memories, guilt, responsibility and forgiveness can be impossibly hard to pinpoint or fully understand.”
—BookPage
“It is not easy to write true crime that is respectful, compassionate, and curious. It’s not easy to bring your own story into someone else’s story. And yet this book manages to do both of those things. It also manages to break your heart every few pages. The story of a law student whose first case becomes the object of her obsession, and the story of two victims of sexual abuse, it’s not an easy read but it is an incredibly affecting one.”
—BookRiot
“Compulsive, eloquent and profoundly troubling. One of those rare books which embrace the genuine complexity of real life.”
—Mark Haddon, bestselling author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
“THE FACT OF A BODY is excellent. So gripping and fascinating.”
—Sophie Hannah, New York Times bestselling author of The Monogram Murders
“The balancing act here performed between autobiography and journalism, documentary and imagination, witnessing and reckoning, the tender and the terrible, is shrewd and graceful. In the hands of a lesser human or writer, it could have all fallen apart; instead, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich has given us an exquisite and exquisitely difficult work of art that makes a fierce claim on our attention, conscience, and heart.”
—Maggie Nelson, NBCC award-winning author of The Argonauts
“A fascinating hybrid of true crime and memoir, THE FACT OF A BODY is intricately constructed, emotionally raw, and unflinching. Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich has written a gripping meditation on memory, justice, and the limits of empathy.”
—Tom Perrotta, author of Little Children
“This book is a marvel. With unflinching precision and immense compassion, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich peels apart both a murder case and her own experience to reveal how we try to make sense of the past. The Fact of a Body is equal parts gripping and haunting and will leave you questioning whether any one story can hold the full truth.”
—Celeste Ng, New York Times bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You
“THE FACT OF A BODY is unlike any murder story I’ve ever read, a masterpiece of both reportage and memoir, a book that could only be written by an author with Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich’s staggering gifts: a relentless reporter with a law degree from Harvard, a poet’s understanding of the cadence of a line, and a novelist’s gift for empathy. Walter Benjamin famously said that all great works of art either dissolve a genre or invent one. This book does both, and its greatness is undeniable.”
—Justin St. Germain, author of Son of a Gun
“THE FACT OF A BODY is a remarkable act of witness, an anatomy of silence and the violence it abets, a book of both public and private accountings. Rejecting the false comfort of certainty, it confronts the inadequacy of all our tools for fathoming not just unforgivable crimes, but the baffling, human grace that can forgive them. This is a profound and riveting book.”
—Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You