The Mars Room

Author(s): Rachel Kushner

General

Reviewed by Bookoccino owner, Raymond Bonner. Unforgettable characters, from the streets of San Francisco to inside women’s prisons.  As realistic as non-fiction; as well written as the most captivating fiction.   Romy Hall is at the start of two consecutive life sentences, plus six years, at Stanville Women?s Correctional Facility. Outside is the world from which she has been permanently severed- the San Francisco of her youth, changed almost beyond recognition. The Mars Room strip club where she once gave lap dances for a living. And her seven-year-old son, Jackson, now in the care of Romy's estranged mother. Inside is a new reality to adapt to- thousands of women hustling for the bare essentials needed to survive. The relentlessly deadpan absurdities of institutional living, which Kushner details with humour and precision. Daily acts of violence by guards and prisoners alike. Allegiances formed over liquor brewed in socks, and stories shared through sewage pipes. Romy sees the future stretch out ahead of her in a long, unwavering line - until news from outside brings a ferocious urgency to her existence, challenging her to escape her own destiny and culminating in a climax of almost unbearable intensity. Through Romy - and through a cast of astonishing characters populating Mars Room- Rachel Kushner presents not just a bold and unsentimental panorama of life on the margins of contemporary America, but an excoriating attack on the prison-industrial complex.

$32.99 AUD

Stock: 0


Add to Wishlist


Product Information

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018

"The Mars Room is mysterious and irreducible. The writing is beautiful -- from hard precision to lyrical imagery, with a flawless feel for when to soar and when to pull back." -- Dana Spiotta "The Mars Room is uniquely informed ... empathetic. An addictive novel, laced throughout with bracing intelligence."--Joshua Ferris  "It's her best book yet, another big step forward. " --Jonathan Franzen * 'Kushner is one of our most outstanding modern writers.' STYLIST' More knowing about prison life than Orange Is The New Black...so powerful.' --NEW YORK TIMES 'Breathtaking.' --VOGUE

Rachel Kushner's debut novel, Telex from Cuba, was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and a New York Times bestseller. Her follow-up novel, The Flamethrowers, was also a finalist for the National Book Award and received rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. Her fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's and the Paris Review. She lives in Los Angeles.

General Fields

  • : 9781910702680
  • : Penguin Random House
  • : Jonathan Cape
  • : February 2018
  • : 234mm X 153mm
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Rachel Kushner
  • : Paperback
  • : 1804
  • : English
  • : very good
  • : 352