Sometimes one can read the first page of a book and be instantly struck by the author’s natural literary talent. This is not one of them...but perhaps it doesn’t need to be.
Each chapter of the book “The Walls Talk: Stories of Faith in Prison” begins with a prison anecdote, which dissolves into a religious sermon that is typically twice as long. In short, if a reader is looking for insight into the life of today’s California prison system, while this book is not completely without merit, one should certainly not expect, despite the book’s title, for prison to be the central focus.
The book presents very much like that of a writer who has never written a book before and, upon accomplishing the feat, publishes without time to pause for a more finely-tuned second draft. To the incarcerated author’s credit, this is likely because Adrian Torres’ ambition is not for his prose to appear polished so much as his aim is to convey his view of Christ’s importance to maintaining as moral a prison lifestyle as possible. Instead, he’s merely one lone individual trying to show how, after previously not behaving in a manner accepted by either religious principals or society at large, he was able to personally achieve and help some of his caged fellow around him achieve some degree of inner peace in a place deeply enmeshed in violence, racism, and squalor.
The book ultimately falls into the category of a run-of-the-mill guy just trying to making a positive difference in the world, even if it’s on a limited scale. On the negative side, because Torres is just a run-of-the-mill guy, not a professional writer, there are a lot of shortcomings, such as his failure to convey even mundane basic details about his pre-prison life, (his upbringing, his job, et cetera,) which would’ve made the book much more interesting and relatable.
Perhaps if Torres were to write a second book, no doubt many of the literary kinks which first time writers experience would not be there. A sequel might perhaps be well-worth worth the author’s consideration.
