I read this today—in a day: what a brag, no? Although I say that knowing that much more time could (and deserves to be) spent on such a work. Maggie Nelson is (so say the McArthur Fellas) a genius. She is if you consider poetry-minded people one sort of genius, anyway.I read this because I recommended it to a friend who likes True Crime books, and since I hadn't read it yet even though I recommended she read it, I figured I might as well read it first to make sure I wasn't recommending trash to

her writing is so simple, but so precise and cutting. the format of mixing diary entries with poems from maggie nelson's present day experience learning about her aunt's life was very effective. it did feel somewhat slight overall, without some of the depth and complexity that you get from The Red Parts

4.5/5 It is not the time to ask why these things happen,but to have faith, the reverend said,and four hundred people wept.Thirty years later the morning is quietand faithless. It is timeto ask questions. In grade school I had a pen knife leftover from some trip to some national park. In high school I had a slow accumulation of blades from a store in the local Japantown, ones I am still coming across in odd corners of my part of the family house. The first time I went to university, I slept wit...

Nelson creates an intricate textual exploration into the fragmentary process of dealing with grief, loss, unsolved crime and violence, and the kind of shadow a family member can cast over an entirely family when they die young and unnaturally. Weaving her aunt's journal entries, her own poetry, news reports, and more, the book serves as both an inquiry into Jane's death and a tribute to her life. Although, mostly presented in verse form in terms of line breaks and spacing, it reads with the kind...

Update, 10/7/18: I pulled this book off the shelf this morning, having recently finished 2666, which is about the femicides in Juarez, Mexico, in the mid nineties. I also recently read I'll be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara about the Golden State serial killers. I feel like I grew up with all these horrific stories, Ted Bundy, reaching back to Jack the Ripper, this theme of male hatred for women, rooted in power more than anything else. We need to elect many more women, we need to raise e...

Not that I'm a very practical person or anything, but I wouldn't find it terribly practical to claim any quality gap between this and the Red Parts, Maggie Nelson's nonfiction analysis of similar events - they both concern the murder of an aunt Nelson never met but often found herself compared to - since they complement each other so well. The Red Parts, which picks up where Jane left off (the case reopened after evidence revealed the first round of trials had convicted the wrong man), seeks fir...

As someone who enjoys the occasional true crime, I have noticed that books dealing with real life murder tend to reduce the victims to just victims. Even if some time is given to victims' lives, their lives are often framed as though they were fated to be murdered. What I appreciate about Maggie Nelson's Jane: A Murder is that its about reconstructing Nelson's aunt Jane. Nelson is trying to get to know and understand a woman she has never met but whose life and presence is felt in Nelson's life....

As my GR friend Julie mentioned in her excellent review, this is like a less conventional companion piece to The Red Parts, Nelson's other book about her aunt's murder in 1969. Where The Red Parts is more of a classic non-fiction/literary true crime piece, Jane: A Murder is more abstract and poetic look at Jane's life and the lead up and aftermath of her murder. The book is made up of poems, excerpts from Jane's diary and news reports of the murder, among other narrative devices. Absorbing and e...

Maggie Nelson is my everything.

holy shit is this good, and hard to read, and incredibly sad but gorgeously written. part fictional memoir, part biography, part autobiography, part gift.

“Jane” is Maggie Nelson’s attempt to piece together the short life and murder of her aunt, Jane, whose life was stolen by a serial killer in Michigan in the late 1960s. Stylistically, it is an unusual book, a gesture of a book: a collage of fragments of journal entries, poems, short prose, news clippings. It is an assemblage of small and scattered pieces. It is a tribute. Frankly, I found this book to be viscerally upsetting. Early on I was surprisingly mortified by Nelson’s effort to bring her

I know that my feelingstoward both parents will soften but now the thought of these people being my parents sounds utterly repulsive and I almost feel sick. I have come to the point where home is unbearable and I will do anything to escape from it. I feel sorry that I feel this way and regretthat our previous good times are spoiled. Someday perhapsmy feelings toward my parents will change, but until then I’m afraid they and myself will have a pretty tough time.

Two bullets :one in front,one in back quickly speak. They tell the heart,No more beats.

I read Nelson's book The Red Parts mostly because I knew it was about a murder, and it's relevant to a project I'm working on.Jane: A Murder is the first book of the two related books. At first I didn't like it as much as The Red Parts, but having finished it, I like it more.This book is poetry, and it's more lyrical, obviously, and I like the way she weaves in a lot of information and letters and parts of Jane's journals. She also moves around in time in ways that are interesting.I think the bo...

I'm pretty sure Maggie Nelson is a genius. I've now read almost all of her books, and they are all so different in some ways--in terms of style and genre, in particular--and at the same time are full of common, compelling threads. And they all, too, are full of heart and wisdom and generosity. Nelson's concerned with intimacy, love, family, the many forms of heartbrokenness, and violence, both physical and emotional. Jane: A Murder is a hybrid book--poetry, excerpts from nonfiction texts and fro...

The world is ours, but we walk in itnoticed.—Maggie Nelson[T]he death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.—Edgar Allan Poe, quoted in Jane: A MurderAll her life Maggie Nelson has been told she's reminiscent of her Aunt Jane, who was murdered at the age of 23, before Maggie was born. It's not too surprising, then, that Maggie chose to look into the murky circumstances surrounding Jane's death, but the resulting document is anything but a standard t...

I'm more enamored with the hybridity of this book than anything else. Maggie Nelson uses poetry, news clips, police documents, and her murdered aunt's own journal entries to turn this story into more than what otherwise may have been a simple true crime book. The result is a book that speaks on so many levels - it's an account of her aunt's murder and Nelson's investigation into it, but it pulls in so much else about girlhood and family and the way society perceives crimes against women. Really,...

Deserves a place with the very best and most emotionally wrenching contemporary nonfiction: Anne Carson's Nox, John D'Agata's About a Mountain, and Ms. Nelson's own masterpiece, Bluets. Essential.

Riveting and haunted. I read this hybrid book in two hours. All the way through. Brilliant and captivating.

Jane: A Murder is a psychological investigation into the murder of Nelson's aunt, committed before Nelson's birth, although it echos through her life, through her mother 's grief and questions. Jane was murdered at 23 by an unknown killer, although believed to be a serial killer moving his way through Michigan. Jane is a fiery spirit, at odds with her family on the night she died, en route to tell them she was marrying a man she knew they would not approve of: a Jewish Marxist (two counts agains...