RaveElectric LiteratureGraywolf Press has done a great service to readers by re-publishing The Red Parts in 2016 ... [it] interrogates our cultural fascination with true-crime drama without easily condemning it. Nelson’s prose is cuttingly self-aware. As she works to make sense of her own morbid fixation on Jane’s murder, she finds that the more that anyone tries to tell a coherent story about meaningless loss, the more they misrepresent it.
Sara Majka
RaveElectric LiteratureThe narration in the stories maintains an anchored and distinct sense of loss, and—in part because of occasional biographical overlaps—it often seems to engage with memoir. The ex-husband Richard feels vivid and continuous each time he appears, as does the runaway father, as does the craving for a baby before it’s too late. But, it’s unclear where or when Majka switches between fiction and nonfiction. Her stories seem to resist those genres.
