In the much lauded “The Fact of a Body: A Murder and A Memoir,’’ Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich mixes true crime and memoir, blending the case of a serial murderer she came across as a law student with memories of her own troubled family history. Marzano-Lesnevich graduated from Harvard Law School and earned an MFA in creative writing from Emerson University. She leaves the Boston area this fall to join the faculty at Bowdoin College in Maine.
BOOKS: What are you reading?
MARZANO-LESNEVICH: I’m on Whidbey Island for a writers’ residency program. I brought “Pachinko’’ by Min Jin Lee. I finished that early on, and it was enveloping. I also brought some back copies of “The Best American Short Stories’’ that I’ve been going through as well as “Eileen’’ by Ottessa Moshfegh. I’m reading a lot of fiction. I am hungry for this creative world after having spent many years involved in a work of nonfiction. The kind of novels I’m reading are ones that create that feeling I had when I was a kid, where your world falls away and you fall into the world of the book.
BOOKS: What kind of reader were you as a kid?
MARZANO-LESNEVICH: Oh man, I was a very hungry reader. I skipped to the adult books pretty immediately. Because Charlie Brown thought Tolstoy’s “War and Peace’’ was this impossible thing, I was devoted to that. I suspect I didn’t understand any of it. I also started reading books by authors in the order they wrote them. I did that with Milan Kundera. We spent summers on Nantucket, and there’s this wonderful bookstore there, Nantucket Bookworks. Having finished whatever Kundera book I had with me, I would go in and ask whether he had published another one yet. The clerks were very sweet and would say, “Not yet, maybe tomorrow, but what about this book instead?’’ I felt very indignant. Like why couldn’t he just publish his notebook or something. I would have read that.
BOOKS: Do you read true crime?
MARZANO-LESNEVICH: I haven’t which is funny considering what I wrote is a partially a true crime book. The exception to that is Michelle McNamara’s “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark’’ about the Golden State killer. I love Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood,’’ and Erik Larson’s “Devil in the White City’’ was profoundly influential to me.
BOOKS: Do you read memoirs?
MARZANO-LESNEVICH: Usually yes and usually deeply so. But given that I’m talking about my own memoir all the time and taught it for years, I needed to take a breather. The memoir I loved prior to this is not really a memoir but uses stories from her medical training, Dr. Daniela Lamas’s “You Can Stop Humming Now.’’ Most people wouldn’t think the line between life and death and the role technology plays in it as beach reading, but I was on the beach just tearing through it.
BOOKS: Is there a memoir you wish was better known?
MARZANO-LESNEVICH: “Nothing Holds Back the Night’’ by Delphine de Vigan. It opens with the narrator talking about her mother’s suicide. You turn the page, and you’re in her mother’s childhood. It’s breathtaking.
BOOKS: When did you start reading memoir?
MARZANO-LESNEVICH: I started in graduate school with Mikal Gilmore’s “Shot in the Heart.’’ I think the entire time I was reading it my jaw was open. It’s the history of his brother [the convicted killer] Gary Gilmore, but it has also the history of Utah, and there are ghosts in there. I had a similar experience with Maggie Nelson’s “Bluets.’’ I began that book at 10 p.m. I hadn’t eaten dinner yet and only had a box of frozen lima beans. I started that book at the kitchen counter thinking I’d go shopping in a minute. I dumped the frozen lima beans into a bowl and curled up in a chair. I ate the beans one by one and read it from start to finish. I was one of the most extraordinary reading experiences I’ve had. I can’t say I’ve eat frozen lima beans since. I wouldn’t recommend them.
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