madgerdes's Reviews (970)

At first I thought this book was just going for shock value rather than plot, and  maybe people liked saying they liked it (rather than actually enjoying the book itself) because it made them appear edgy? However, once everything with the plot and characters coalesced I reeled those condescensions back in and ended up truly enjoying the book. Enjoy feels like a strange word to use to describe my experience reading this book — kind of like saying I enjoyed Tender is the Flesh — because it was an upsetting read. Nevertheless I’m glad I read it and now I’m disappointed I didn’t purchase the used copy I happened upon this weekend. Someone else read this so we can talk about it lol!!!!

I’m really struggling my feelings about this book. On the one hand, it was interesting to bear witness to the process and experience of being a CO. It’s not a perspective I tend to sympathize and was definitely valuable in terms of a fuller sociological picture of correctional dynamics. However, much of what Conover wrote about individual inmates didn’t sit well with me - especially the way he discussed the few transgender individuals incarcerated at Sing Sing and a few of the women employed there. I know this book was published in the 90s and was a product of its time, blah blah blah, but parts of it were hard to read for that exact reason. Overall I don’t think this is a book I’ll recommend to people for casual reasoning, but it was a useful read to get inside the head of a (temporary) correctional officer. The job is obviously extremely traumatic, and there are forces that drive people to seek out correctional employment in the first place, but this book really just left me with lots of questions and a sense of unease.