Snowdrops, Chaos, Cake and Emotional Timescales ~ by Minnie Birch

The Prison Book Group is running late. The prison book group

photo courtesy of  91.7 Coast FM

quite often runs late. It is my first day back here after a few days, and chaos has hit minutes after opening the library door. The strangest of things happen here which you take in your stride, but are a stark reminder that you are in a prison, that this is an unusual place to be. Then as the chaos starts to settle, you boil the kettle, gather biscuits and a pile of books, and sit down in the comfy corner of the library, which looks just like any public library, and book group begins.

“How was your week?”

“What’s new?”

“Are you watching the football?”

“Who has read the book?”

And there, all of a sudden, in the most unusual of places you are with a group of like-minded people about to discuss a book.

This month’s book was Snowdrops by A.D Miller. We have been

Cover photo courtesy of Amazon

sent copies of this book from the National Literacy Trust, who run a scheme called Books Unlocked, which is about getting high quality books into prison book groups – they send us shortlisted Booker Prize novels to discuss. 

There are a lot of fantastic organisations that are all too aware that low literacy levels are rife in prison, that many people do not read or struggle with reading, that many never have read for pleasure at all. Encouraging people to develop their literacy skills is a key part of what the library service does, but this scheme is not about that.

This scheme plugs another gap, this scheme is for the readers, people who have spent their lives immersed in a good book, for whom reading has always been an escape, for those who can be “snobby” readers, want to dissect their books apart and have a shared reading experience. That’s who these books are for. 

As a bit of a slow reader myself, I can admit to struggling sometimes to get on-board with the narratives of this sort of fiction. Snowdrops, however, is a quick and easy read. I galloped through it and enjoyed the language and the story line. 

The overall feeling from the group is that it isn’t developed enough, we are left wanting to know a bit more about the place in which the book is set and the characters we are meeting.There’s a feeling the book is autobiographical and we have a lot of discussion around this. 

Then, as is inevitable (and important I feel) in any book group, we digress and we talk about other things. I find there is always something that makes me stop and think. This month my “stop and think” came from someone who was talking about how time has different faces. 

photo courtesy of Pexels.com/John Tong

He says he has been in prison 21 months and it has actually gone quite fast, it doesn’t feel that long, it all feels quite new still and the time is, thankfully for him at this point in his life, passing quickly. But he also mentioned how emotional time is different. He has been in prison 21 months and that has passed quickly, but due to his sentence, he's been away from his wife for 21 months and he says it feels like an eternity. You can see why I need to stop and think on this.

Cover photo courtesy of Amazon

Next month, we will be reading The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga--feel free to read along with us and send us any thoughts I can bring to our discussion.