This book is so bleak and so slow, which is to say of course I loved it. Give me just the dreariest story in existence and take 450 pages to describe a trial that took place in three days and I'm gonna be happy. So I wouldn't necessarily recommend this book to everyone, but it was one hundred percent the book for me.

This book is a portrait of all the characters involved in the trial. The narrative is taking place over the three day murder trial, but it spends most of the book going back in time to the 40s and World War II, and especially the Japanese concentration camps in America. You see how the whole past built us up to this moment and this murder trial. And you also see the full lives of all these characters. Their parents, their childhoods, everything that's led to their present. It's so beautifully done.

There were a few weird moments in this book that I struggled with. Just for example, the first (and most notable) was when the coroner was examining the body of a man and spent a whole paragraph describing his penis and comparing it to his own. Like weird? So weird. There were a few moments like that when the characters spent a rather large amount of time on something that was so strange and unnecessary.

I struggled with that, for sure, but also I did kind of enjoy the detail in the story. There's so much detail in everything that's going on that doesn't feel like it contributes to the story, but the whole world is so well described that it forms an entire picture. Like you're able to see everything in this book, and feel everything that the world is offering, because of all the unnecessary details.

If I'm being honest, I found the trial scenes a little boring. Usually I enjoy trials in books, and all the dialogue and questioning witnesses, and the law in general, but I just wasn't invested in it here. The real story felt like it was happening outside of the trial, so I kept feeling like I was waiting for the trial to be over.

It also felt like the ending was overlong. I think around the 350 page mark (100 pages left), I started feeling ready for the book to wrap up. I think that was also around the time we stopped going so far back in time and focused solely on the death of Carl Heine and the trial. But then it simultaneously felt like the very final ending of the book (the last few pages) wrapped things up a little too quickly.

The setting of the snowstorm was fantastic. Throughout the book it's happening in the background, and it adds so much to the trial and the story. It was the perfect choice. It gave the trial this sense of utter reality in the present, like you can feel it happening, which I don't think would have been as strong without the storm.

All in all, I thought this was great. It's not a favorite, but I'm so glad I finally got to this and could see myself rereading it in a few years. It's masterfully crafted and so beautiful. If you like slow and dreary books, I highly recommend this.