Whether you prefer the book or the streaming series, Orange Is the New Black has fans wrapped around its little finger. Due for a fourth season in 2016, the Netflix exclusive takes us on a roller coaster ride of emotions as we experience prison from Piper Kerman’s point of view. We go behind bars as Kerman and her cell mates fall in and out of love, make new friends and lose old ones, and experience what it’s like to be an affiliate of crime. The book and show differ but each offers insight to Kerman’s trials and tribulations. Robert Fisher, our guy at Bookmans Grant, gives us his take on the non-fiction book.

Orange Is the New Black

I read Orange Is the New Black when it first came out and reread it two more times over the years. I have not seen the television show, though from what I’ve heard about it, fans of the program might find the book a rather low-key affair. Kerman relates what happened to her when federal agents show up at her door. Years earlier, she engaged in a girlfriend’s narcotics operation. Now there has been a bust and names are named, Kerman’s among them. She plea bargains and is sentenced to just over a year in prison. There she experiences uncaring bureaucrats, obnoxious guards and unexpected friends among the inmates.

Orange Is the New Black is a tale of surviving boredom and indignities. The fact that many of the women are in for drug offenses makes Kerman wonder about her past and how it contributed to her fellow inmates’ situations. The book proves to be sometimes sad, sometimes funny and often thought-provoking.

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