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speculativebecky 's review for:
Out of Orange
by Cleary Wolters
Out of Orange surprised me with how difficult it was to put down. Unlike Kerman's memoir, which was written in a world that had never heard of her through the wildly popular netflix spin off about her life, Wolters' memoir is very much a response to the Orange is the New Black series. As a result, she focuses a large portion of the novel on the drug smuggling operation that landed her and Kerman in prison years later. This portion of the novel was exciting and terrifying, Wolters finding herself and her friends suddenly in way over their heads in a very high stakes game. She describes her eventual escape from the drug smuggling world, followed by her arrest, then skips ahead to the time spent with Kerman flying to Chicago to testify against a co-conspirator. She details some amount of her time spent in prison after that, coming to the same conclusions about the failings of the prison system Kerman did in her memoir but somewhat less poignantly given the shorter period of time she spent discussing that time in her life. It's hard to fault her for not going into the same depth however, given the longer duration of her stay. One of the most interesting things for me was reading about her experience being confronted unexpectedly with a fictionalized portrayal of her life, a fairly unique experience I would have loved to read more about. Overall a fascinating book.