A brutally honest depiction of prison life from an officer’s perspective and a cautionary must-read for any woman...
A female officer closely scrutinizes prison police work.
Though billed as a novel in the subtitle, mononymous author Ajut’s introspective, insightful debut reads more like an intensive memoir. Her testimony draws heavily on her history as a former Atlanta area Department of Corrections officer in a maximum security state prison until her retirement. Throughout chapters detailing her inner-city upbringing with an abusive, alcoholic father coupled with her dehumanizing training regimen at the police academy, the author paints a largely unflattering portrait of a physically and psychologically grueling profession where “female visitors and children especially are calculated prey and become emotionally and psychologically trapped in this secluded world of coldhearted criminals, misogyny, and sexual objectification.” If an officer is hardworking, has integrity, and is morally sound, the author believes the prison system, its convicts, and its employees will seek to break down that benevolent foundation. The job indeed took its toll, as Ajut spent years struggling with stifling confinement, the nefariousness of corrupt peers, suicides of both prisoners and officers, and continual anxiety and fear. She dispenses dire warnings for women who enter the corrections arena that as “fresh new meat,” they will become targets for the mind games inmates and officers play. The insider details of prison life (both in men’s and women’s facilities) as a guard are extreme, eye-opening, and often difficult to read. Officers are unarmed except for batons while prisoners roam about unrestrained; there is rampant sexism, animalistic brawls between men, and relentless, antagonistic sexual overtures among women. A closing chapter of female inmate stories drives home prison brutality and desperation. Ultimately, Ajut was forced to fight regular feelings that she was “one step away from a mental meltdown.” Brazenly frank and written with an intensive sense of self-awareness and personal strength, the author educates with tough love while revealing the fetid underbelly of her former profession with the grace of a slam poet and the knockout punch of a professional fighter.
A brutally honest depiction of prison life from an officer’s perspective and a cautionary must-read for any woman contemplating a security career.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5320-4340-6
Page Count: 196
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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