Pomegranate: A Novel

This book took me so vividly inside someone else's pain and trauma that sometimes I had to put the book down and walk away. What a triumph, to lead me through both prison and psychotherapy, and still leave me with a feeling of hope. The daily reality of managing as a woman dependent on the bus system and walking through the city at all hours is an important part of how the book educated me. The siren call of the blissful oblivion available through opiates is all too believable. One of the best books I've read this year. 5 🌟 stars.

This book is cram packed with life issues - the really difficult ones that many actually experience in today’s world such as addiction, racism, incarceration and how are we helping them? The reading is tangled but good. Surely when one reads it, one must reflect and think about the terrible current social issues also. Apply these thoughts when you read it.

This book’s attempt to describe the effort required to be reunified with your children after incarceration and drug use is remarkable. The author does not take the easy way out by describing the reunification; instead, she shows how the mother comes to accept responsibility for the life she has led. The book, however, does seem like the product of a prison writing program. There are several “flights” from common presentation of action to Impressionism which does not drive the story forward, but does show the author’s ability to use metaphor and extended metaphor. Again, this is an interesting book, worth overlooking the showing language to get a glimpse of how incarceration affects children.