The Mars Room

by Rachel Kushner

It's 2003 and Romy Hall 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, the San Francisco of her youth and her young son, Jackson. 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. The deadpan absurdities of institutional living, which Kushner evokes with great humor and precision.

• ISBN10: 1476756589
• ISBN13: 9781476756585
• Publish Date: 7 May 2019 (first published 1 May 2018)
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Scribner Book Company
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 352
• Language: English

Reviews

[clementine]

This is a really difficult one for me. There were some passages that I found incredibly moving, and the writing was strong generally. It's obvious that Kushner has done a lot of research about the California penal system, and I think this was a strong critique of the prison industrial complex and the way it dehumanizes people who are frequently victims of social inequality. The characters were rich and sympathetic, and I think the novel successfully portrayed how criminality is not inborn but generally caused by structural socioeconomic problems. Women who resort to criminality due to lack of options or because they are in abusive situations are continually retraumatized by the penal system and exploited for capitalist gains. This is a difficult, complex topic treated - from my vantage point, at least - delicately and accurately, though I'd certainly welcome information to the contrary. It's a quick, absorbing read but still thought-provoking. However, there were some elements that I found extraneous (Doc in the men's prison, the use of Ted Kaczynski's manifesto). Romy was a fascinating, well-developed character, but the focus on the ultimately sympathetic educated white protagonist will always read as a little tone-deaf. Granted, Romy was a lower-class sex worker and drug user and victim of a sexist justice system, which makes her a more interesting narrator than Orange is the New Black's Piper, who is an upper-middle-class white woman and certainly not a victim in the same way. That said, Romy does have access to various privileges which many of her fellow inmates lack, and she is consistently differentiated by her level of education. That's not to say that the other characters aren't sympathetic - in fact, they're portrayed as extremely intelligent and cunning if not book-smart - but it's always worth interrogating whose stories are told and why. Romy is not more of a victim because she's white and literate, and I hope readers are able to think critically and not automatically lapse into thinking of her more sympathetically because of the privilege she has access to. There are many woman in similar situations to Romy who are not perceived as victims, because sex workers and drug users are seen as deserving whatever happens to them, particularly if they are racialized and lack the signs of formal education. That's not to say that this story is not important - I just think it's important for us to always think about why some perspectives are privileged over others.

[ibeforem]

I've wrestled with my feelings about this book, and I think I've fallen solidly on the side of "meh". I struggled to get through it, but kept going because I was interested in the prison drama of it all. I can appreciate the literary quality of the writing, but the story structure left something to be desired. Sometimes things are linear, sometimes we're jumping around from person to person at different places in time, and I often forgot who I was reading about and had to check back to see.

The bulk of the story is about Romy, an exotic dancer who kills a man who is stalking her and is sent to jail for it for life. She's strangely dispassionate about it, except when she's thinking about the son she has left behind and will never see again. But even then, he eventually ends up to be more of a bargaining chip, a way for her to get attention. And like Romy's story, I liked the stories of many of the other characters that are woven in, even though I found everyone (including Romy) to be a stereotypical "type". My biggest problem was that nothing tied together in the end.

And speaking of the end, I hated it. I literally turned the "page" on my kindle expecting more and found nothing. I guess I'm not a fan of an ambiguous ending. I think it really added to my annoyance that I finished the book and immediately though "that's it?"

There are many, many stellar reviews of this book online, and it was long-listed for a Man Booker prize, so it's entirely possible that I'm missing something big here. I guess you'll have to read it yourself to decide.