Rachel Kushner. (2018). The Mars Room: A Novel. Scribner.

Rachel Kushner. 2018. The Mars Room: A Novel. Scribner.

Rachel Kushner, The Mars Room: A Novel. Scribner, 2018.

Rachel Kushner. The Mars Room: A Novel. Scribner, 2018.

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1. • value: incarceration
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creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Kushner, Rachel
   • bioText: Rachel Kushner is the author of Creation Lake, her latest novel, The Hard Crowd, her acclaimed essay collection, and the internationally bestselling novels The Mars Room, The Flamethrowers, and Telex from Cuba, as well as a book of short stories, The Strange Case of Rachel K. She has won the Prix Médicis and been a finalist for the Booker Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Folio Prize, and was twice a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction. She is a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and the recipient of the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her books are translated into twenty-seven languages.
   • name: Rachel Kushner

publishDate

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title

The Mars Room

fullDescription

TIME'S #1 FICTION TITLE OF THE YEAR

NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018

FINALIST for the MAN BOOKER PRIZE and the NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD

LONGLISTED for the ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL

An instant New York Times bestseller from two-time National Book Award finalist Rachel Kushner, The Mars Room earned tweets from Margaret Atwood—"gritty, empathic, finely rendered, no sugar toppings, and a lot of punches, none of them pulled"—and from Stephen King—"The Mars Room is the real deal, jarring, horrible, compassionate, funny."
It's 2003 and Romy Hall, named after a German actress, is at the start of two consecutive life sentences at Stanville Women's Correctional Facility, deep in California's Central Valley. Outside is the world from which she has been severed: her young son, Jackson, and the San Francisco of her youth. Inside is a new reality: thousands of women hustling for the bare essentials needed to survive; the bluffing and pageantry and casual acts of violence by guards and prisoners alike; and the deadpan absurdities of institutional living, portrayed with great humor and precision.

Stunning and unsentimental, The Mars Room is "wholly authentic...profound...luminous" (The Wall Street Journal), "one of those books that enrage you even as they break your heart" (The New York Times Book Review, cover review)—a spectacularly compelling, heart-stopping novel about a life gone off the rails in contemporary America. It is audacious and tragic, propulsive and yet beautifully refined and "affirms Rachel Kushner as one of our best novelists" (Entertainment Weekly).

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reviews

1. • premium: True
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     Starred review from January 22, 2018
     Two-time National Book Award finalist Kushner (The Flamethrowers) delivers a heartbreaking and unforgettable novel set in a California women’s prison. Single mother Romy Leslie Hall is serving two consecutive life sentences at the Stanville Women’s Correctional Facility after murdering a stalker. From prison, she narrates her drug-addled, hard-bitten past in San Francisco, where she worked as a stripper at the legendary Mars Room, as well as her present, where she serves her sentence alongside inmates such as Conan (so masculine as to have been mistakenly sent to a men’s prison), the heavy metal-loving white supremacist known as the Norse, and loquacious baby-killer Laura Lipp. Readers slowly learn the circumstances of Romy’s conviction, and eventually glean a composite portrait of the justice system, including the story of Gordon Hauser, a well-meaning but naive English teacher assigned to Stanville, and a dirty LAPD cop, "Doc," who serves out a parallel sentence in the Sensitive Needs block of New Folsom Prison. But the focus is on the routine at Stanville, where Romy pines for her son, reads the books recommended to her by Gordon, recalls her past life in vivid and excruciating detail, and plans a daring escape. Kushner excels at capturing the minutiae of life behind bars, and manages to critique the justice system and vividly capture the reality of life behind bars. Romy is a remarkable protagonist; her guilt is never in question, but her choices are understandable. Kushner’s novel is notable for its holistic depiction of who gets wrapped up in incarceration—families, lawyers, police, and prisoners; it deserves to be read with the same level of pathos, love, and humanity with which it clearly was written. Agent: Susan Golomb, Writers House. (May), This review has been corrected; an earlier version stated a character was on death row.

2. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     December 1, 2017
     

     Having ranged the world in Telex from Cubaand Flamethrowers, both National Book Award finalists, Kushner here places us in a much more telescoped setting: Stanville Women's Correctional Facility in California's Central Valley. It's 2003, and since Romy Hall is starting two consecutive life sentences, she'll have lots of time to get acquainted with institutional living and the violence of the guards. With a seven-city tour.

     Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

3. • premium: True
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     March 1, 2018
     Another searing look at life on the margins from the author of The Strange Case of Rachel K (2015) and The Flamethrowers (2013).Romy Hall killed a man. This is a fact. The man she killed was stalking her. This is also a fact, but, as far as the jury was concerned, the first fact mattered more than the second. That's why she's serving two life sentences at Stanville Women's Correctional Facility in California's Central Valley. Romy soon learns that life in prison is, in many respects, like her former life working at the Mars Room, a down-market strip club in San Francisco. The fight for dominance among the powerless looks much the same anywhere, Romy explains, and this novel is very much a novel about powerlessness. Romy is smart, she loves her son, but the odds were against her from the beginning, and most of the stories that intertwine with hers are similar in both their general outlines and their particulars. Chaotic family backgrounds, heavy drug use, and sex work are common themes. Several of the women Romy meets have been in and out of the jail for much of their lives. There are exceptions, like Betty the one-time leg model, who paid a contract killer to murder her husband for life insurance money and then put out a hit on the hit man because she was afraid he would talk. She becomes something of a celebrity inside Stanville. The cop who killed the hit man also becomes a major character. He's different from the women in this novel because he once had considerable power, but he, too, has a history of abuse and neglect. Gordon Hauser, who teaches GED-prep classes at Stanville, has more agency that any other main character, but he quickly learns the limits of his ability to help any of the women he meets. This is, fundamentally, a novel about poverty and how our structures of power do not work for the poor, and Kushner does not flinch. If the novel lags a bit in the long sections of backstory, it's because the honest depiction of prison life is so gripping.An unforgiving look at a brutal system.

     COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

4. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     April 1, 2018
     

     Kushner, National Book Award finalist for The Flamethrowers and Telex from Cuba, is back with another stunner. It primarily follows the story of Romy Hall, who grows up on the seedy side of San Francisco, becomes an exotic dancer, and ends up with a life sentence for murdering her stalker. Knowing she has little chance of ever being released, her main worry is for the fate of her young son. We also learn the stories of several of Romy's fellow inmates, as well as of Gordon Hauser, the reclusive prison GED teacher, and Doc, an ex-cop in prison for killing his lover's husband's hit man. This novel includes copious descriptions of people living desperate lives and committing horrible crimes. Without a shred of sentimentality, Kushner makes us see these characters as humans who are survivors, getting through life the only way they are able given their circumstances. This survival continues in prison, where underqualified and disinterested corrections officers constantly berate them for the "bad choices" that landed them in prison. VERDICT This is not the type of novel where a happy ending is possible, but Kushner manages to make the closing paragraphs beautiful. [See Prepub Alert, 11/6/17.]--Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis

     Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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TIME'S #1 FICTION TITLE OF THE YEAR

NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018

FINALIST for the MAN BOOKER PRIZE and the NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD

LONGLISTED for the ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL

An instant New York Times bestseller from two-time National Book Award finalist Rachel Kushner, The Mars Room earned tweets from Margaret Atwood—"gritty, empathic, finely rendered, no sugar toppings, and a lot of punches, none of them pulled"—and from Stephen King—"The Mars Room is the real deal, jarring, horrible, compassionate, funny."
It's 2003 and Romy Hall, named after a German actress, is at the start of two consecutive life sentences at Stanville Women's Correctional Facility, deep in California's Central Valley. Outside is the world from which she has been severed: her young son, Jackson, and the San Francisco of her youth. Inside is a new reality: thousands of women...

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awards

1. • source: The National Book Critics Circle
   • value: National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
2. • source: The Booker Prize Foundation
   • value: Man Booker Prize for Fiction Nominee
3. • source: Notable Books Council
   • value: Notable Books for Adults

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A Novel

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   • description: Fiction / Literary
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   • description: Fiction / Crime