Reviews

Life After Death by Damien Echols

brittthebull93's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

4.5

oookateooo's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

2.75

nightwolfnym's review against another edition

5.0

I find it hard to review memoirs because it makes me feel like I’m reviewing a person’s journal of their life, but to not say how much I enjoyed “Life After Death” would be a shame. Damien Echols was wrongly convicted of murder and sent to Death Row for 18 years. I’ve written several things over the years about my outrage of the case, so I’m not going into detail on any of that because it can be found all over the internet. What I will say is that my admiration for Damien Echols grew with every page. For somebody to go through so many horrible events in one lifetime and still to come out of it alive and unbroken is a miracle in itself. Damien talks about his childhood and the not so pleasant conditions he grew up in and continued to take us on a journey of his life all the way up to the night he was arrested for murder. The corrupt cops, lawyers, and the judge that had a hand in arresting and convicting Damien (along with Jason and Jessie) just make me sick. I’m still stunned at how those people got away with a modern day Salem’s Witch Trial. The majority of “Life After Death” was wrote from prison and I cant even begin to describe how I felt when he described the conditions he lived in for half his life and the things he witnessed while locked away like an animal. Damien has a wonderful way with words and wrote in much detail. I often found myself going through a wide range of emotions while reading: Anger, disbelief, sadness, disgust and even laughter at times. While there was a lot of dark days in his life (understatement I know), he found a light where most people wouldn’t and managed to survive. “Life After Death” was filled with a lot of heart and soul in every page and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the world from his eyes and I couldn’t be happier that he’s now able to experience life and all its magik as a free man.

lhbyrne94's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

3.0

katieeduncan17's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative slow-paced

4.0

horfhorfhorf's review against another edition

3.0

Everyone has a story - and most of these stories are worth telling--especially coming from someone like Damien Echols. But this book... man, I had such high hopes for it. But it needed to be edited stringently. There's at least 40 pages worth of words I think should've been cut before publication. All those extra bits added up, and I think they greatly impacted the quality of the book as a whole.

If I never see the word "magickal" used to describe an evening again, it'll still be too soon.

erincataldi's review against another edition

5.0

Holy shit. I haven't had a book depress me, disgust me, inspire me, and compel me this much in a long time. It's a book filled with injustice and I applaud Damien Echols for making it through this insane and maddening ordeal.

I had followed the West Memphis Three case extensively when I was in high school. For those of you who aren't familiar with the case, in 1993 three teenage boys in Arkansas were wrongly convicted of satanically murdering three little boys. It was a very modern day Salem witch trial and Jason and Jessie were given life imprisonment and Damien was given the death sentence simply for being the town "outcasts." I watched the 3 HBO "Paradise Lost" documentaries and read "The Devil's Knot," but nothing touched me more than Echols memoir of the incident and his experiences in prison.

After Damien was found guilty he spent EIGHTEEN years on death row and his life was utter hell. In this book he describes the fellow prisoners, daily rituals, and how hard it is to keep sane when you're in solitary confinement. It is a true triumph of the human spirit.

This memoir is written quite eloquently and goes back and forth between memories of his childhood, coping with the WM3 case, his life in prison, and his life as a free man (he was released mid 2011). The prose sticks with you and you find yourself going on an emotional rollercoaster ride with Damien as he recounts some of the worst points of his life.

This is seriously a must read. Despite all the odds, Damien came through a horrific ordeal that kept him imprisoned for half of his life. Injustice like this cannot be forgotten. Read his story and be inspired (also be sure to check out the Sundance documentary "West of Memphis" produced by Peter Jackson, it's coming out on DVD soon). Corruption exists everywhere, what are you doing to stop it?

kjbmod's review against another edition

5.0

This book made me SO MAD at all of the horrible injustices that happen to innocent people day to day. It also taught me to take all of the little things for granted because life is a very small and fragile thing that most take for granted.

amy_m_143's review against another edition

3.0

picked up this book after watching the Paradise Lost and West of Memphis documentaries. The book was pretty good, definitely a story worth learning about.

shellieg's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.75