Piper Kerman’s memoir of her time in federal prison is a gripping and at times surreal read. The TV show has made it a very well-known story, of course, but the book brings it home in a way that is a bit more relatable, and a bit less outsized.

To begin with, Kerman’s story does not read like the sort of glamorous, hyper-seedy mafia enterprise that’s depicted in the show. When she first gets involved in the drug trade, she’s a woman with a good education but very little in the way of personal strength or common sense. But those weaknesses are not so hard to imagine, nor is it all that difficult to see some of those same weaknesses in myself. It’s an odd, there-but-for-the-grace kind of experience to read this book.

The book is not entirely about common sense: it’s also about all the many ways that we as a society fail the least fortunate among us. Kerman’s indictment is quite systematic and very personable, and I think it’s to her credit that she weaves together elements of her story with the background, facts, and figures that tell the story of our prison-industrial complex. The critique begins with her conviction, and the mandatory minimum sentencing policies that surround it. It proceeds to the lived experience of daily life in the prisons, the shocking abuses that are possible in a system so devoid of checks and balances and so obsessed with punitive, and not restorative, justice. And it concludes with a look at the pitiful re-entry programs provided at the prison shortly before she left, and the policies that create a revolving door between the prisons and impoverished communities. While there are books that are more thorough in their critique of the prison system (The New Jim Crow comes to mind), this one is quite a good and accessible introduction to the problem.

The details of daily life in prison are also really eye-opening. The women Kerman encounters are extremely memorable, especially because so many of them are depicted so faithfully in the TV show. The moments that are odd or graceful also leave a real impression. In particular I loved Kerman’s description of the first time she was allowed to visit the shores of a giant lake on the property of the prison, and the hour or so when she and a couple of other prisoners were left unattended in a suburban subdivision outside the complex. There is so much about prison that is dramatized and sensationalized in TV and the movies, that real-life accounts that differ from those depictions are all the more fascinating.

Perhaps it’s obvious, but it’s nonetheless important: Kerman’s experience in prison is probably among one of the easiest that’s possible to be had. She has a short sentence in a minimum-security prison, and it’s a federal prison with some semblance of professional management and standards of care. On top of that, she comes from a well-to-do background and has an excellent education: she has the resources to survive her stay and to re-enter society when she leaves. While the book is sometimes gritty, and while it’s sometimes difficult to imagine life in such constrained and soul-crushing circumstances, it’s worth remembering that there are people suffering still crueler fates in still more punishing circumstances.

It’s difficult to separate this book from the TV show, especially because the show is still drawing so much inspiration from the book, even on its third season. But it is in fact another experience altogether, and I think a wortwhile way to read about the prison system.