A mix of Browns day to day work life and the stories of some of the women she cared for, it was in turn fascinating, heartbreaking, funny and brutal and if you can handle the subject matter (and the wide range of content warnings), I’d recommend this one! Why it struck home was that I used to have a friend who was a school librarian and raised in a very wealthy family in Boston. She came across as arrogant and self centred but also a bit lick ass-y when talking about some people.

This book tells stories from her time at HMP Huntercombe, a prison which houses foreign nationals, most awaiting deportation. This is a touching memoir that can decrease the amount of crime and drug abuse and positively alter the lives of many people in our society. Daug pastangų ir širdies atidavusi moteris, savo nepasitenkinimą dėl tokios situacijos, išlieja popieriaus lape ir netikėtai jos laiškas atsiduria pirmuose lakraščio puslapiuose.Her compassion, understanding and empathy for the inmates was one of the main things that stood out to me in this book. The fact that she wrote a book which so clearly demonstrated her biases regarding mental illnesses just shows how unaware she is of her lack of understanding. I also wonder whether creative licence has been taken as the novel opens with a story about a woman who had just been arrested for murdering her partner. All the characters speak with the same voice and none of them sounds authentic to the characters or the stories as she presents them. Often those individuals that society judges the most harshly have in fact made the very same decisions that most of us would if put into those same impossible circumstances.

I do think though that this book, probably all of them would make a good, even fascinating, tv show. Dėl biurokratinių kliūčių, visų pacientų mylima medikė, vieną dieną nuspręndžia palikti savo darbo vietą. A lot of the patients are addicted to drugs when they come in to prison and the stories they told were sad.Following Amanda's experiences of working as a doctor first in a GP Surgery, then a Male Youth Offenders Unit, a male prison and finally a women's prison over many years, she sees first-hand incidents that occur within the prison walls and learns more about most of their backgrounds. Believe in yourself,” Brown tells a young Romanian, a victim of sex trafficking who has been convicted of drug offences. As she told me her story, she rolled up her jeans to show me at least 20 small circular scars from cigarette burns inflicted by her abuser. One of them, who has a violent partner, told me it’s the first time she had felt safe in bed for seven years. Really sad to hear of Dr Amanda Brown's personal tragedy, but lovely that the book is dedicated to her husband.