The Body In Question is a 2019 literary fiction novel by Jill Ciment. It was published in June 2019 by Pantheon. I read it as part of a book club, along with another book. The novel tells the story of two sequestered jurors engaging in an affair during a highly-publicized murder trial. Although they agree to keep their oaths as jurors not to discuss the trial, things become complicated once deliberations begin.
The two main characters are C-2, the woman Hannah, and F-17, the man Graham. Other characters include the other jurors, who are referred to be nicknames C-2 gives them, and C-2's husband. There isn't a lot that's shared about these characters at all. F-17 is an anatomy professor who falls in love with C-2 during their affair. C-2 is a married photographer whose much older husband is dying and she begins the affair mostly to get it out of her system before she becomes a widow. She tries to insist she has no attachment to F-17, much to the evidence otherwise. The other characters are entirely one-dimensional and serve a purpose to either make the pair suspicious that they've been discovered or provide filler. No one seemed to have any motivations or personality beyond surface-level traits. The characters are basically paper cut-outs with no personality. Call me crazy, but if I'm reading a book, I need to at least feel something for the characters within.
One thing I dislike most about the story is that the focus seems to be on the wrong thing. Yes, the blurb explains that the story is about the forbidden love affair between two jurors, but Ciment made a mistake in creating the story of the trial they're jurors for. Rather than the pair be jurors for just any highly-publicized murder trial, the crime in question involves the death of a child in a fire and if the defendant, the victim's older autistic sister, set the fire on purpose. This part of the story was meant to be just the simple backdrop, the plot device bringing the two characters together, but was actually the most intriguing part of the story.
The trial, in the few scenes where the trial is actually about the crime and not C-2 waxing about details that don't really matter or her lover, presents an interesting mystery. Was the defendants confession coerced? Did her twin force her to confess? Why would she kill her brother? The mystery, sadly, takes second place to two very boring characters having a affair and being paranoid about being caught. Then, it's time for the jury to deliberate and, shocker, the two lovers are on different sides. One is the hold-out preventing a unanimous decision from being reached which only annoyed me more. Eventually, a decision is reached and the trial ends. The defendant is found guilty. Shortly after the trial, someone leaks it to the press that C-2 and F-17 were having an affair. Now, I was expecting some kind of consequences for the secret being revealed. Maybe the defendant's lawyers get her a new trial citing that one influenced the other's decision. Maybe the two jurors are held in contempt for violating the court's orders regarding how sequestration works. None of that happens. C-2's husband feels understandably betrayed, F-17 seemingly faces no consequences and the other jurors get trashed in the media at first for the verdict and later for not speaking up.
While I didn't like the plot, I can't say that this book is all bad. From a technical writing perspective alone, the book isn't bad. The writer clearly has a lot of talent and based on the reviews for her other books, this one seems to be an outlier. It's also a very short book, which works in its favor. Coming in at under 200 pages, I wasn't completely outraged at how I felt about the story when it was over. If this book had been twice as long, but with the same outcome, I'd be a lot angrier about the time I had wasted.
I honestly thought this book was a waste of time. In literature, words such as "story arc" or "journey" or "growth" get thrown around a lot. The Body In Question has none of that. The conclusion isn't really a conclusion. Nothing happens. The story goes exactly nowhere. C-2 isn't different at the end of the book. F-17 isn't. None of the events that happen after the trial make any difference or sends any kind of message to the reader. The most that happens is the jurors doing a symbolic "revote" on the verdict, but that's it. I've read books with good endings, I've read books with bad endings, but this is the first time that I've encountered a book with a pointless ending. There wasn't enough substance in this novel to justify an ending of any kind. If there was more focus on the characters, and they had actual personality, I might feel differently, but the lack of anything sticking out to me makes me feel like this book was a complete waste of time. I wasn't given enough reason to care about the jurors, their affair or anything going on, which made this book completely unremarkable. I can imagine that, in a few years, someone might ask me if I've read this book, and because its so unremarkable and unmemorable, I'll say "no" because I'll have completely forgotten about it.
Rating: 1.3 stars
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