Name: Grace M's review of The Body in Question by Jill Ciment
Item: The Body in Question
Rating: 5
Author: Grace M

Jill Ciment

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.

A Novel

The Body in Question

Aina

how did she write an emotionless, cold MC so RIGHT

Grace M

"The place: central Florida. The situation: a sensational murder trial, set in a courthouse more Soviet than Le Corbusier; a rich, white teenage girl--a twin--on trial for murdering her toddler brother. Two of the jurors: Hannah, a married fifty-two-year-old former Rolling Stone and Interview Magazine photographer of rock stars and socialites (she began to photograph animals when she realized she saw people 'as a species'), and Graham, a forty-one-year-old anatomy professor. Both are sequestered (she, juror C-2; he, F-17) along with the other jurors at the Econo Lodge off I-75. As the shocking and numbing details of the crime are revealed during a string of days and courtroom hours, and the nights play out in a series of court-financed meals at Outback Steak House (the state isn't paying for their drinks) and Red Lobster, Hannah and Graham fall into a furtive affair, keeping their oath as jurors never to discuss the trial. During deliberations the lovers learn that they are on opposing sides of the case. Suddenly they look at one another through an altogether different lens, as things become more complicated"--

y✦

✦ SO MUCH to unpack in less than 200 pages
✦ what happens, who suffers when you let your impulses win, and where is the point of no return
✦ learning about sequestered juries is fascinating enough but the book also tastefully explores difficult themes like mor(t)ality and ethics and grief and flawed justice systems posing as right and true
✦ page-turner, a cure for reading slumps

Devin Mainville

As someone who enjoyed every moment of being on a jury (even though it was a fairly boring civil case) and gets hopeful every time a new summons arrives in the mail, I was instantly intrigued by The Body in Question // Jill Ciment which focuses on the jury in a sensational Floridian murder trial. 

The trial aspects were intriguing, but the real meat of this novel is the relationship that develops between two of the jurors, C-2 and F-17, during their sequester and C-2’s relationship with her older, ailing husband. 

I went into this book looking forward to the crime angle, but came away appreciating it for its beautiful narration and captivating look at how some people deal with grief. It wasn’t the book I was expecting - it was better.

Aina &
The Body in Question by Jill Ciment

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