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Loading... The Body in Question: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries) (edition 2020)by Jill Ciment (Author)
Work InformationThe Body in Question by Jill Ciment
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. a tragic story about two jurors on a murder case trial and their ruinous love affair. a short, well written, and entertaining read ( ) A tightly-packed novel about one woman's time as a juror on a controversial case and its aftermath. I couldn't put it down. The trial is really only a back drop to the human interactions that make up the story. I loved some of the author's choices, like only referring to characters by the jury number in the first half of the book. This was an Ann Patchett recommendation and it didn't disappoint. The front half of this book is great! Then the back half turns into a completely different book. I am mixed on this because it is a story which draws you in, but I don’t know. I know one issue for me is I just finished The Holdout which had a similar plot line of two jurors in a relationship and life after. no reviews | add a review
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The place: central Florida. The situation: a sensational murder trial involving a rich, white teenage girl--a twin--on trial for the horrific murder of her toddler brother, and the sequestered jury deciding her fate. . Two of the jurors sequestered (she, Juror C-2; he, F-17), holed up at the Econo-Lodge off I-75. As the shocking and numbing details of the crime and its surrounding facts are revealed during a string of days and seemingly endless court hours, the nights, playing out in a series of court-financed meals Hannah and Graham fall into a furtive affair, keeping their oath, as jurors, never to discuss the trial. During deliberations the lovers learn they are on opposing sides of the case and realize that their fellow jurors are wise to their affair. After the trial's end, as Hannah returns home to her much older, now, suddenly, frail husband (they married when she was 24; he, 58) an exploding media fury involving the case catches them all up in a frenzy of public outrage at a jury that seems to have convicted the wrong twin, and a judge who has received an anonymous handwritten letter about a series of sexual encounters ("I feel it is my duty as a juror and a citizen to report that two of my fellow jurors had sexual contact on more than seven occasions during our nights at the motel..."), calling into question their respective verdicts, and announcing she is releasing the jurors' names to the media. Hannah's "one last dalliance before she is too old" takes on profoundly personal and moral consequences, as the novel moves to its affecting, powerful and surprising conclusion. No library descriptions found. |
Author ChatJill Ciment chatted with LibraryThing members from Aug 15, 2009 to Sep 1, 2009. Read the chat. Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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