The Prison Book Club Audiobook (Free)

While surviving in London, Ann Walmsley was brutally mugged simply outside her own house. The assault shook her perception in the essential goodness of people and remaining her so shaken she was struggling to walk outside alone for quite a while. A few years later, now came back to Canada, her friend Carol Finlay asked her to take part in a reserve club inside a men’s moderate security jail. Ann’s interest and need to be of service eventually overcame her anxiousness and fear and she authorized on.

For eighteen weeks, about The Prison Book Club Ann accompanied Carol to a remote building at Collins Bay, meeting with heavily tattooed reserve club users WITHOUT the presence of guards or security camera systems. Unlike the publication clubs she participated in beyond prison, there have been no wines and mozzarella cheese, no nice furnishings, nor superficial discuss jobs or latest vacations. Yet, the prison reserve club proved to be a place to talk about ideas, learn about one another, and regain mankind.

For the inmates, the books were rare prized belongings and the conferences an oasis of security and a rest from isolation within an otherwise hostile environment. And their reactions to the books were genuine and multifacited. Discussions about the obstructions the characters confronted exposed glimpses of their personal struggles, sometimes devastating and occasionally comic. Reading a multitude of books – The Grapes of Wrath, The Cellist of Sarajevo, Outliers to Infidel, etc, – the conversations became a starting point for exposing conversations about reduction, anger, redemption, heroism and loneliness.

In The Prison Reserve Club, Walmsley follows six particularly involved book club people, asking them to keep journals and participated in candid one-on-one conversations. Ann portrays these inmates – Graham the biker, Frank the gunman, Ben and Dread the Jamaicans, as well as the robber duo Gaston and Peter – with level of sensitivity and understanding and comes after their lives as they leave prison. And Ann herself develops, overcoming her dread and reconciling her knowledge of their crimes with the people themselves. Woven throughout is the compassionate determination of Carol Finlay, as she works tirelessly to increase her plan across Canada and into the United States.

Anyone who also loves books has learned that books can transform one’s life, and this holds true for the inmates, too. The men are changed with the books and subsequently, the men switch Ann. This knowledge allowed her to move beyond her position as a victim. Indeed, the knowledge was so moving that she came to realize given the choice, she’d forsake the business of her privileged friends and their comfortable book club, and make the two hour travel to Collins Bay.