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And so they throw him into the sea with two weights on his ankles. "Swim, you bastard, don't you see the shore is right there? You're free!" He has just been released from prison after eight years with fifty dollars in his pocket; and now he is supposed to find an honest job and live a normal life.
He tries. A beginner asked to ski down an icy World Cup downhill with a pair of wooden skis.
The street is his world: a sea of concrete in which he has swum all his life. A hyena used to taking advantage of the slightest weakness in others to survive and dominate, exploiting every possibility. Parents not available. Friends? Junkies, thieves, fences, whores, and conmen.
So he calls a job agency explaining his problems: no money, no skills but with serious criminal records, he needs to change his life in a couple of weeks. The employer understands the situation and hires him, advances his first salary, and so he gradually integrates. He accepts the rules, swallows the mind-numbing daily routine without a blink, so distant from the life of a criminal, learns to manage expenses and finally starts playing golf, watching art films, drinking wine. Then he marries a shy girl and they all live happily ever after. Yeah, sure! As if!
It's a fast-paced book that grips, captivates, and will rape your eyes for the few hours it will take you to read it thanks to a direct prose, true, without frills, unnecessary descriptions, hyperbole, and god-knows-what. Bunker knows what he's talking about: he doesn't simplify reality, he doesn't trivialize the problems an inmate, alone in the world, has to face once his sentence is served. His weapon? A dry, crooked stick against a hungry grizzly bear. He projects in these pages in a vivid and winning way a despairing situation, with no way out. It's almost philosophical when his character reflects and realizes that his good intentions conceived in the cell are destined to remain just that. It takes a few weeks, but then he looks in the mirror and accepts that he has become a ferocious beast. Society promises forgiveness on paper, telling you generically to integrate and screw you. As if a hyena could ever truly become a poodle for the living room. But who created this murderous beast?
A book to read.
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