Reviews with content warning for Sexual violence - The Red Parts

I enjoyed the form and style of this - melding journal, essay and fact, across the trial of Nelson's aunt who was brutally murdered. Nelson captures this period of time with sharp and observed reflections, whilst reflecting her memories past and present, particularly with the death of her father, relationship with her mother and grieving a lost love. Loss and grief creates a web of mystery and what could have been. I particularly enjoyed the reflections on the act of writing and storytelling itself, and who and what the act is ultimately for. To immortalise, or let go of experiences? Is either possible? Why is she writing this book - for the live or for the deceased? And what does justice look like 30 years after the fact?

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dorsetreader's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

4.0

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dylan2219's review against another edition

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dark informative slow-paced

4.25

Maggie Nelson's most focussed book I've read thus far, and while it didn't dazzle me intellectually as much as The Argonauts did, it's a more measured, considered examination than that book. Nelson is best when she weaves her immensely interesting personal life and experiences with broader social trends and theories, and here, the murder case of her aunt, who she never met and later obsessively researched herself, is an axis around which she meditates on grief, misogyny, true crime, violence, criminal justice, and the interlinking, knotty problems of these themes in contemporary America. She's more detached and less lyrically rapturous here than in her later books, but it fits the penetrating, often visceral gaze that she applies to her subject matter, which often gives way to emotional or upsetting memories, feelings, and real-world developments. The greatest section here for me is "On the Tracks" where in an image from a single night, Nelson seems to grab at the heart of the matter that she finds herself evading elsewhere, and giving genuinely profound insight and voice, demanding the right of women to feel safe and independent where and whenever, in an often indifferent and masculine system that attempts to overpolice them as a means of trying to protect them.

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annecharlotte_reads's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

4.5

In the vast expanse of true crime writing, this book brings dignity, depth and beauty -- there's no voyeuristic aesthetisation of the death of women but the writing itself is beautiful and soft and hard in all the right places. Maggie Nelson is both a poet and one of the most interesting thinkers of our time. She deals with autobiographic material in a subtle and powerful way, never relying too much on metaphor or obvious connections. I found particularly interesting to read this after The Argonauts and measure just how much, between these books, some of Nelson's central themes (women's bodies and autonomy, violence, mortality, what it means to be a family) and original thinking have developed.

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klitchin's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional medium-paced

4.0

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nmp's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny reflective sad fast-paced

4.25

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