Vanessa Frake, 2021

I bought this book in my local TESCO, in an attempt to make up a 2-for-£9 deal that the store was running. This isn't generally an indication of quality.

Quite often the books you can buy from supermarkets are forgettable at best, but I have pulled out a couple gems over the years.

This book was genuinely very enjoyable. I found myself thinking about it whenever I wasn't reading it, which, for me, doesn't happen very often. I was really interested in reading her experiences inside of the prison, working alongside the other staff to house many hundreds of men who have violated our fundamental laws. This was, of course, the draw of the book. You wanted to know what it was like to work in this system, and weren't necessarily drawn to the identity of the woman who worked there.

I think the author was aware that it was her experiences that were what was selling the book, rather than her personality, because we don't learn an awful lot about her as a person. It's strange, really: because the book is about her, but it also isn't...

It's about her experiences, but can we talk about experiences without talking about the person they happened to?

In the author's case the answer is weirdly close to 'yes'. Each chapter could have been told about a different person and it wouldn't have greatly affected the book. The 'protagonist', if you like, was almost inconsequential. The vehicle for driving the plot forward. Only included because a first-hand account was necessary.

We learn bits about her - working in a cafe, getting married, having a family, meeting the Queen... on paper, she does so much that's so interesting that I feel I should have got to know her better. She comes off as somewhat standoffish with the other people in her life, and I don't think she'd resent me saying so. She talks about the 'titanium wall' she's built around herself, preventing people from getting in. This wall comes down at the end of the book in quite dramatic fashion, revealing the person beneath. It was nice to feel like I was finally seeing her, but it also made me reflect on how strange it was to get through a whole book, told in a first person perspective, and reach the last chapter with the main character still being a stranger to me. It wasn't until right towards the end that it felt like we were reading about a real human being. I don't mean that to sound insulting, and I regret that I can't find a better way of wording it. I found myself finishing the book thinking 'I wish we'd got to know her sooner'.

There were some minor spelling mistakes, a few places the grammar was off; nothing major, and on-par with what I've experienced previously with cheap TESCO books. As always, I blame the editor. They're paid to catch that stuff, leaving the author to just write. So that's not on her. It didn't massively undermine anything, but it is the second way in which the author has been let down. The first is: who the hell told her that £5 was an appropriate price for this book!? She could easily have charged more for this. Who else is going to provide us with that kind of an insight into her world? The price having been so low was ludicrous. She should have made serious cash, and I hope the sales are high enough to be of use to her because damn - a fiver is chump change for a book, and she was really let down by whoever didn't push to get her more.

I have one complaint. It also happens to be quite a serious one.

There is a chapter in which she discusses her encounter with Colin Ireland.

Still technically belonging to one of the younger generations, I must confess to having never heard of him. So I read his Wikipedia page before continuing with the chapter to get an idea of who she was talking about. I then went back to the book, where she discussed his various crimes. As I was reading I thought 'hang on a minute...' She was using the same words as was in the Wikipedia page. Same words, same sentences, copy and pasted, it looked like.

Now my first thought was 'maybe Wikipedia is quoting her, here - maybe she's the source'. She wasn't. The source was an article published in The Times at the time of his arrest. As far as I can determine, she took word-for-word from his Wikipedia page. That's a big no-no in my book. I was once employed in a profession (some buzzfeed-y type rubbish) which encouraged borderline plagiarism, and the way we had to get around it was by re-wording things we found elsewhere in order not to raise any red flags. So I don't begrudge her getting information from elsewhere, I used to make money doing the same. But to have not changed the wording at all... no-no.

I might be wrong. It might be one of those coincidences you hear so much about. Maybe.

Ultimately the book was great. I recommend it to anyone looking for an insight into a world which (hopefully) we'll never have to experience; and for a fiver? Yeah, snatch that one up next time you're looking for a Sunday read.