2011: Book 18

Room by Emma Donoghue


336 pages

Completed 2/26/11

This novel, told in the perspective of five-year old Jack who has never left the Room where he lives with his mother, is touching. While not entirely realistic, the terror of having someone be in complete control of your life and one-room existence is wonderfully portrayed.

The inflection given to Jack by Donoghue is insightful and touching; for a young child only exposed to his young mother, Jack is an intelligent boy. Post-escape, his discoveries of the real world that he was previously told was make-believe, are innocent and confusing, yet telling. This was a good read.

2011: Book 17

Couldn't Keep it to Myself: Testimonies From Our Imprisoned Sisters by Wally Lamb and the Women of York Correctional Institution


368 pages

Completed 2/25/11

I am a huge Wally Lamb fan; She's Come Undone and The Hour I First Believed are two of my favorites. After reading Lamb's I'll Fly Away a few years ago, I realized I had missed the first of the York prison stories in this compilation.

A collection of autobiographical and fictional stories from women in prison for various offenses - assault, homicide, manslaughter - the writing workshops run by Lamb in this Connecticut prison allowed these women to have a voice - most for the first time. With an underlying theme of abuse and sexual assault, these women's stories do not ask for pity or deny their crimes. Instead they are forced to confront the scariest thing - themselves. Some are joyful stories; most are horrific.

The voices that these women are able to express only through writing is indescribable; Lamb has offered them a way for their souls to be free, if only for a brief time. As the final line in the book by Dale Griffith, a writing teacher at York, so wonderfully puts: "My body's still in prison, but my spirit's finally free."