Selected as a Book of the Year 2017 in the Guardian' Maggie Nelson's short singular books feel pretty light in the hand But in the head & the heart they seem unfathomably vast their cleverness & odd beauty lingering on' Observer 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 & 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 & tried In 2005 Nelson found herself attending the trial & 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 & downright confusion
- Maggie Nelson has produced a work of profound integrity & in its subtle indeterminacy deadly moral precision