The Body in Question

Books

*** NEW YORK TIMES 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF THE YEAR *** From the author of Heroic Measures ("Smart and funny and completely surprising . . . I loved every page" -Ann Patchett), Act of God ("A feat of literary magic"-Booklist) and, with Amy Hempel, The Hand That Feeds You ("An unnerving, elegant page-turner" -Vanity Fair), a spare, masterful novel. 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 ...