Review: Deeply engaging
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 5, 2014
Wow. I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around Kristen Pierce’s book, ‘True Tales from Women’s Jail’. A true account of the author’s own experience (she spent two years in prison in the Orange County Jail), Kristen met other women whose crimes remind you of the darkest moments of the hit musical ‘Chicago’—women who killed husbands in a fit of blinding jealousy and rage, women who grew up amid the shadow of parental dysfunction, women who struggled with sexual perversion. And that’s only the beginning.‘True Tales from Women’s Jail’ perhaps follows the recent crop of “true to life tell-alls”, whose resurgence inspired by Diablo Cody’s book ‘Candy Girl: a Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper’. Yet, Kristen Pierce’s book sets itself apart for its sheer sincerity and honesty—after all, Kristen didn’t plan on entering OC prison on her own—she was only “dragged” into it, no thanks to her then drug-addled boyfriend. But what would have otherwise served as a serious setback to other people, Kristen turns into an opportunity to understand the other inmates, most of whom have committed intriguing crimes, to say the least.And most importantly, strange as it may seem, I find this book incredibly entertaining—some of the accounts feel like they’ve come straight from a Quentin Tarantino film plot. But there they are—factual testaments of what real women did in real life, and author Kristen has uncannily captured the so-called “gestalt” through her sensitive, accurate and evocative writing. Let me suffice it to say that this is a book worth reading by everyone—get a copy of this today. We can all learn from these stories. A solid five-star rating for this one.