4.5/5

I come to this book many years after having read Maggie Nelson’s stunning The Red Parts which follows up on this story as the case is reopened, around when this book was first published in the early aughts. But Jane, no matter the context in which you approach it, still has incredible raw power as Nelson brings to life a person she never knew whose shadow has loomed large over her life and family for decades. Such an excavation of feeling and the family ties that bind could only be done by Nelson, whose poetry and reflections don’t just try to fill in the space Janie left, but honor the full life she lived before it was tragically cut short.