This is hands down my all-time favorite book. I think it started my obsession with NYRB classics as well. I wrote this description about the book on my other tumblr:
“The novel depicts a brutal prison and its all-too-human inmates. This is an environment Braly knew well, he spent somewhere upwards of 30 years in and out of jail.
He does everything in this book - authentic sounding idiomatic speech, seamless switches of multiple internal vantage points, and disparate plot points that don’t connect into one linear story without losing the overall momentum of the bigger tale he’s telling; he manages to make the novel’s only true setting - the prison - become more interesting the more time the reader spends with it. To top it off, Braly’s prose is lyrical and unbelievably sensitive. This is even more noteworthy because the book is so graphic its publication had to be delayed as the manuscript was considered a violation of Braly’s parole. I love this book.”
