"A brutally candid but always humane memoir of redemption." —Kirkus Reviews
"A painful and honest and beautiful account of a life blighted by circumstance and neglect, then wasted in criminality, and then, gloriously, redeemed by the power of the written word and by the capacity of the human heart for compassion and forgiveness . . . Heartbreaking, poignant and affecting." —Stephen Kelman, author of PIGEON ENGLISH
"Grimly compelling." —Sunday Times
"What does it say about a man who had done almost twenty years in prison that his writing should be marked by such humanity, compassion, and wisdom? Never pleading for himself or pitching for our pity, Erwin James’s account of life inside is fascinating not just for its portrait of a harsh and secret world but because in the author we are introduced to a man of rare self-awareness, strength and intelligence." —Ronan Bennett, author of HAVOC, IN ITS THIRD YEAR, long-listed for the Booker Prize, on THE HOME STRETCH
"Prison writing doesn't come any better than this." —Jonathan Aitken, author of MARGARET THATCHER: POWER AND PERSONALITY, on A LIFE INSIDE
"Beautifully written, shocking and provocative . . . This is a tale of redemption but one must first witness a walk through darkness. James, who achieved some fame with his brilliant columns for the Guardian from inside prison, uses his gift for simple, direct prose and his facility with narrative to chart a desperate life . . . Did his suffering lead to his crimes? Has he suffered enough for his deeds? These are questions beyond the ken of this reviewer who was moved, consoled and troubled by the memoir." —Glasgow Herald
"This is real life in an unreal environment, frankly and powerfully rendered." —Time Out on THE HOME STRETCH
"As James shows, a focus on prison as a site of punishment may offer some comfort for victims and the more carceral-minded facets of society but rebuilding prisoners returns them to society as functional people and gives them the emotional intelligence to understand fully the scale and effects of their crimes." - New Humanist
2016-01-02
A convicted murderer-turned-journalist tells the story of how he became a criminal but then underwent major personal rehabilitation while serving time in prison. Until he was 7, James (A Life Inside: A Prisoner's Notebook, 2005, etc.) lived in a poor but loving family. But then both his parents were involved in a tragic car accident that killed his mother and injured his father, Erwin Sr., who began drinking heavily as his body healed. The elder James took up with a series of women afterward; each time he did, the family experienced some stability. Inevitably, however, Erwin Sr. fell into a pattern of drunken violence, which he took out on each of his children's new mothers and also caused him to get arrested for public brawling. Meanwhile, the shy and ever anxious James ran wild and turned into a criminal. He began to rack up charges against him for increasingly more daring thefts and discovered the "lovely calm sense of peace" that alcohol seemed to offer, all while watching his home life deteriorate. When he was not staying with his father and his latest girlfriend, James was living either with other relatives or in homes for delinquent boys. By the time he entered his 20s, he had become a drifter and pub fighter who, over the course of his many muggings and robberies, killed two people. James escaped into the French Foreign Legion before turning himself in to the British police. Prison became his salvation: while incarcerated, he earned a university degree, began writing columns for the Guardian about prison life, and met a psychologist who helped him work through his traumatic childhood and adolescence. The author's unsparing descriptions of the abuse he suffered and then inflicted on others is often difficult to read, but his book offers hope that no matter the nature of a criminal's actions, "it [does] not define all of who that person [is]." A brutally candid but always humane memoir of redemption.
