A more direct Nelson than I'm used to, as she uses her characteristic analytic prose to discuss the trial of her aunt's murderer, the dissolution of a treasured relationship, and the death of her father. Much is fascinating here (though Nelson doesn't NEED an interesting subject to write interestingly, and in some ways I like her best when she makes small details sing). The court-case, shown in graphic, disturbing detail, takes place in 2005, but her aunt was murdered in 1969. Nelson is so intim...

I was supposed to be reading established poet and non-fiction author Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts for a book club I'm a member of, but unable as I was to find a copy, I plumped for The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial instead. This piece of extended non-fiction, which deals with the aftermath of her aunt's unsolved murder in the late sixties, and new evidence pointing to her killer, was first published in 2007. Of all of Nelson's books, this was the one which appealed to me the most.The blur...

4.25/5. A harrowing account of the trial against the suspected murderer of Maggie Nelson‘s aunt who was killed in 1969, whose murder remained unsolved for decades and whose case was re-opened in 2005 due to new DNA evidence. It poses interesting questions about our society’s obsession with the deaths of (young/white/middle class) women and also works as an intimate look into Maggie Nelson‘s own inner life during the trial. It felt very honest and didn‘t shy away from anything and since it's a ra...

I finished this book and am conflicted in how I feel about it. The writing itself is evocative and interesting, but sometimes feels overwrought. The subject matter (a sort of wandering exploration of how a murder impacts a family, the course of a trial, how certain events intersected with the author's life at the time) is obviously serious and compelling. Nelson's maternal aunt was murdered in the late 1960s (before Nelson was born), and her murder was thought to be committed by a serial killer....

Wow. I loved The Argonauts, but this was something else. This is Nelson recounting her aunt's murder trial (her aunt was killed as a young woman, before Nelson was born, and her murderer was brought to trial 36 years later). At every turn, Nelson gently questions everything: the way people publicly and privately think about crime (especially crimes against women); concepts like "recording" and "witnessing" and "justice"; and, most of all, her own motives as the storyteller. One of my favorite bo...

Maggie Nelson's writing is absolutely wonderful. She has such a poetic and lyrical voice and this book is so honest and thoughtful. Highly recommended.

Rating: 7/10

It feels a little presumptuous to read a memoir about a brutal, sexualized murder within the author's family, and to come out the other end thinking that they should have done it differently. Perhaps I won't go so far as to actually assert that. What I will say is that I wanted more. Structurally, the narrative could have been tightened up and focused, and the text occasionally made chronological jumps that were not included for stylistic purposes. The tone was often detached, which makes sense

This is a weird book. I bought it because I saw a 48 Hours Mystery piece about a writer who, while writing about an aunt's murder, finds out the murder is close to being solved. (It goes to trial, though even I, who usually side with the prosecution, think it's a shaky case.) Anyway, I thought this would be a book about a family seeking justice and answers. In a way, I think it's much more about how trauma affects generations of a family. Reading it triggered my frequent mantra-- Why don't more

Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts was one of the first non fictions books I read when I decided to vary my reading a few years back. I adored it – Maggie Nelson’s particular brand of intellectual maybe even academic memoir writing resonates with me. As such it is a bit of shame that it took me so long to read another of her books. But now that I read this, I will for sure read all her other books as well.A few months before Maggie Nelson published her book of poetry, Jane, which focusses on her late...

Maggie Nelson is one of my favorite writers. A poet and poetic memoirist, she has an interesting slant on everything she writes. Her mind is fascinating and her control of language amazing.The Red Parts is one of her more straightforward works. It is a memoir of the trial of the man accused of murdering Nelson's aunt, a crime committed before Nelson was born but whose repercussions affected her life. The book recounts the events of the trial but also Nelson's musing on the "murder mind" of all p...

Maggie Nelson's memoir about the murder of her aunt, Jane is compelling, honest, and beautifully written. Nelson narrates the experience of her family, through the trial of Jane's murderer, 36 years after the crime occurred. The Red Parts is more than just a narrative of this trial though. Nelson intersperses this experience, with slices of everyday life, in doing so, effectively showing what it means to grow up in the shadow of such a tragedy; the extensive ripples of violent crime. Although an...

Maggie Nelson’s aunt was murdered in Michigan in 1969. Thirty-five years later, just as Nelson had completed writing a poetry collection about her, the case was reopened when new DNA evidence emerged. Most authors would quickly zero in on the trial itself, giving a blow-by-blow of the lawyers’ questioning and witnesses’ statements. Although Nelson does document important developments in the month-long trial, and describes autopsy photographs in blunt detail, her account is much more diffuse than...

This book mentions the Michigan murders several times. Luckily I found a book on that event because I honestly don’t know a thing about that. I’m going to get that book within the next couple of weeks and see how they are related.SCRATCH THAT- I already own this in audio format! I’m am terrible about watching for duplicate purchases. You’d think I would have some sort of app or website that would help me keep track of those things….

It is always thrilling--and rare--to find a new author to fall in love with, and to discover that she or he has lots of books, and you're just at the beginning of the happy process of spending time with them. It's true I'm looking forward to reading books 2 and 3 in the Hunger Games series, but, fun as those are, it's nothing compared to how excited--really, joyful--I feel to have discovered Maggie Nelson's work. It's odd to feel joyful about a memoir that deals with the brutal murder of the aut...

Maggie Nelson was born 4 years after her Aunt Jane Mixer, a University of Michigan law student, was murdered, in 1969, at the age of 23. Jane’s death was presumed to be one of “The Michigan Murders,” a series of women killed in the Ann Arbor area for which John Collins was found or assumed guilty. Jane’s file was finally abandoned, the family thought, as a cold case.In 2005 Nelson completed a book of poetry, Jane: A Murder, mixed with some of her aunt’s diary excerpts. When the book tour was bei...

I've suspected--no, known--for years that I needed to read this book, that it would unlock certain mysteries about memoir for me. And it has--though I'm hard-pressed to say why. I think Nelson is really good at positioning her subject in a way that it doesn't matter if the book is frequently about other things. While The Red Parts is ostensibly "about" the murder trial of her long-dead aunt Jane after DNA evidence implicates a killer nearly 40 years after the fact, a previously unsolved murder t...

Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts was one of my favorite reads of 2016 (and possibly of all time), so when I learned that Graywolf Press was rereleasing her earlier memoir, The Red Parts, I was ecstatic and snapped it up as soon as possible. It did not disappoint. The Red Parts has an interesting framework: Maggie Nelson was just getting ready to release a book-length poem about her aunt Jane, who’d been the victim of an unsolved murder as a young woman decades prior, when she learned that Jane’s ca...

A beautifully crafted and philosophical novel as the author follows the trial of the man accused of the murder of her Aunt. Reflective and melancholy.

So glad I finally read some Maggie Nelson. Obviously this was greatness, but the way she ties in our cultural obsession with the death of young white girls, the cinematic tropes, the eroticism of slasher movies, our fascination with serial killers and the way we're told what to feel about it all, makes this not just a beautifully precise examination of her own personal experience with her aunt's murder but holds up that mirror to all of us.