This was a fast read and I always consider that positive because the book held my interest. I enjoyed the flashback element more than anything because setting is always an aspect that draws me into a story. I empathized with the protagonist in her situation and I enjoyed the characterization in this book. It was not my favorite thing that I have read this year, but I think that has more to do with my preferences and not the writing. I thought the writing in this book was strong and I like the very female-driven plot. I would round this up to 3.5 stars for the author’s style and really the 2nd half of the book. Thank you for choosing me to review this.

This book is a slow starter, too slow for me. I stopped reading at 37% when it still wasn't clear to me where this story was going. It is well written and I do think I will pick it up again at a later date - perhaps when on a long haul flight - when I have time to devote to longer blocks of reading time.

Rachel Kushner is SO talented. Period. Here's a novel about a stripper on death row for killing her stalker. The characters are fully realized, nuanced, HUMAN, sympathetic. Romy's story made me clench my fists with frustration, but she never blames others for her circumstances and does not make excuses for her predicament. I don't know that I'm describing this story very well. I enjoyed the book very much.

This was a novel I couldn't put down. I was so disappointed when I realized I was at the end. The characters broke my heart in so many ways. We see the cruelty of life and the criminal justice system. The prisoners were definitely portrayed in a more humane light than the prison guards, but, that is also probably a more authentic representation. After watching documentaries about humane prisons in other countries that don't lock up prisoners for life and that treat them as humans, not as dogs in pound waiting to be gassed, I can only hope other readers will question our prison system. I have a friend in prison with a death sentence for being charged for killing her daughter, and her case has been on Netflix's True Confessions, but this novel made me think about her behind bars for a crime she may not have committed, and if she did commit, how she may be spending her days behind bars unless she gets pardoned. What a cruel world we live in.

A solid 3.5. What to do? 3, but recommending. If you liked Orange is the New Black, read this book. To me, many similarities. I felt like I was often in the head of/experiencing the past and present of the inmates—particularly the main character, Romy Hall.

Romy is serving two consecutive life sentences—plus six years--at Stanville Women’s Correctional Facility in California’s Central Valley. She has a young son, Jackson, at first living with her mother, then after her death, a ward of the state.

This book examines both the prison system and the “system” that put many of its inmates inside. The Mars Room is the sleazy strip club Romy worked in before being incarcerated. And where Kurt Kennedy—another interesting character--began to stalk Romy. Kennedy’s full story is not revealed til the latter part of the book.


Bleak? Tragic? Absolutely! But with bits of humor, nonetheless. And the prose—some of the descriptions absolutely wonderful. The stories of the others inmates—particularly Serenity—the trans-- are mesmerizing. And the story of Conan also grabbed me as well as many of the others: Doc, Sammy, Button, Betty, to name a few. Gordon Hauser, the prison teacher also had a somewhat interesting, if long-winded, story.

There were some great descriptions as well as prose that revealed something of prison life:

“He gleamed like something pressure-washed.”

A lieutenant: “…a big Mack truck-shaped lady who was, I later came to understand, partly shaped like that on account of her stab-proof vest. The vests made the men look gym-pumped and the women look like packing crates.”

The parole board described: “…pictured as a series of Phyliss Schlaflys all in a row, frowning, with stiff hair, in industrial pantyhose and little rippling American flag pins…”

“…can you stop crying, Miss Hall?” If an inmate can’t stop crying they check a box on the suicide risk form. They weren’t hoping to spare a life. They were trying to avoid paperwork and internal investigations.”

I found this book compelling, but not a page turner.

I was fully prepared to fall head over heels with this novel. It has all the elements that I love and am interested in but as I plowed through it, I finished it with a sense of emptiness. It contains important issues relative to the justice system and the poor hand dealt to women by virtue of their place in the socioeconomic ladder and their choice of vocation. This misfortune extends to the judicial process and the disadvantages that these women face in initial arraignment and in parole questions. Life inside the prison portrayed the loneliness, the cruelty and power hierarchy but also the love and support that can occur within these walls. Raw and unflinching, this story of a sex worker who killed a man who was stalking her is told in chapters that had me confused from time to time as to which character was talking. Some of the transitions felt muddled but more importantly, I cared about the issues but not the characters. I wish it had spoken to me more..

The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner is a fictional examination of not only the prison system but of the circumstances and the people that are fed into the system. Kushner is also the author of The Flamethrowers, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and a New York Times Top Five Novel of 2013. Her debut novel, Telex from Cuba, was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and a New York Times bestseller and Notable Book. She is the recipient of a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2016 Harold D. Vursell Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Romy Hall is being transported to Stanville Women's Correctional Facility isolated in California's Central Valley. There are no nearby towns and the only traffic on the roads are prison busses or prison staff. The scenery consists mostly of almond orchards. Hall has been sentenced to two life sentences plus additional time. She leaves behind her mother and her five-year-old son. The bus ride to Stanville is long and she is subjected to a talkative and annoying seatmate. There is also a teenager on the bus in the late stages of pregnancy. In fact, she gives birth during the prison indoctrination. The indoctrination continues as trustees mop up the afterbirth. Prisoners soon realize that they are no longer people and the staff has no sympathy or even empathy for any prisoner. The reader is taken on a journey both forward and back in time to examine Hall's life and her crime.

Interjected into the story are Gordon Hauser and Rich Richards. Hauser is a GED instructor who is the human side of the prison system. He has provided help to death row prisoners and befriends Hall. His relationship with Hall is through the GED program. He assumed Hall was uneducated and offers low-level math questions. Hall at first plays dumb but later admits she did graduate high school. Hauser buys her books to read. Rich "Doc" Richards is a crooked cop sentenced to prison. He is in the Sensitive Needs Unit of New Folsom Prison. He is protected and housed with offenders convicted of crimes against children and transgendered convicts. His role in the book is a comparison to Hall. Both lived in a seedier world. She a dancer at the sleazy Mars Room. He as a corrupt cop. Also interjected into the story are excerpts from Ted Kaczynski and Thoreau reflecting isolation in nature, opposed to institutionalized isolation, and also their versions of attacking the system.

The Mars Room is a dark book on the realities of the prison and justice system.  Kushner delivers a story that is empathic to the prisoners but not overly sympathetic.  Justice is blind, but not in the intended way.  The system is a rubber stamp that feeds the prisons.  The public defenders are overworked to the point of forced apathy.   Offenses that may have been justifiable receive sentences that are not justified.  The story itself is much more personal, characterwise, than the themes that I have mentioned above.  A multi-layered story with multiple themes makes for an interesting read. 

Publication Date: May 1, 2018

This is another book that from the synopsis alone, I really wanted to like. Unfortunately, I did not. I found myself continually reading it just for the sake of getting through it and being done with it, which is never a good feeling. There are so many problems with this book, and while some novels offer little redemptions in the form of character development, storytelling, etc., there was no upside to anything that happened within its pages and I was just really put off by it.

I have no problems with bleak books—give me angst, drama, grittiness any day, so long as there's a bit of substance to it. Instead, this book hopped from first person to third, covering the POV of various random characters who were all either terrible human beings or completely pointless to the story. I didn't feel for anyone in any of their respective situations because there was nothing to connect to, no emotional stakes that made me sympathize, empathize, or feel much of anything for any of them. In other words, everyone in this book was very 2D, even Romy, the main character who's serving two consecutive life sentences for the murder of her stalker.

I can't really talk about the more major issues I had here as they're rife with spoilers. All in all, this book just left a bad taste in my mouth. I'm glad now I can move onto something else.

The Mars Room follows the story of Romy Hall, a woman who is facing two consecutive life sentences for murder at Stanville Women’s Correctional Facility. Throughout the novel we learn about Romy’s life before incarceration: her adolescence, her job at The Mars Room, her son, and her various relationships, and are given insight into the colorful lives of her fellow inmates and Romy’s life in prison.

Kushner’s writing is beautifully frank; each storyline feels incredibly real, does not hold back, and remains fast paced and intriguing. While Kushner’s story is fictious, this work raises SO many questions about our current legal system and the treatment of inmates. I oftentimes found this novel so hard to read, especially when it came to the initial introduction of the new inmates into prison (I.e. the pregnant incarcinatee), and remained dumbfounded as Kushner effortlessly described such heartbreaking and harrowing desperation in Romy. This book was exceptional and I plan on recommending it in the future.

Before I read The Mars Room, by Rachel Kushner, I was really excited and all about the synopsis. A behind the scenes look at life in prison, with the main protagonist, Romy Hall, serving two consecutive life sentences. However, while I still liked The Mars Room, it was not at all what I expected.

Kushner did not hold back, and told a story that was raw, provocative, and made you think about the intricacies of life in prison. Everything was a struggle, and keeping your footing on the "right" side was precarious at best. The backstories were a powerful way to showcase how people can fall into a way of life that lives them incarcerated, and how difficult it is to stay clean and free once (if) released.

The narrative was rambling, self-centric, and in some cases, seemed to have no point. It was more of a third-party observing everything that happened, without actually being involved. This dulled any of the scenes with action or high-tension. I also couldn't connect with all of the characters, no matter how much I would emphasize with their situations.

Overall, I'm just conflicted (as I'm sure my rambling, disjointed review shows). I wanted to love this, but ended up just liking it. Maybe if I didn't have a preconceived notion, I would have been more of a fan. Or, maybe I just couldn't get behind the narrative style of writing Kushner used. Either way, I still enjoyed reading this.

Thank you to NetGalley for a copy of this ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

A very unique, quick read. Would recommend for anyone looking for women in prison stories.

Very fast paced and very intriguing. I enjoyed how it kept me hooked and it was an original story. Nowadays so many books read the same. Highly recommend

Kushner explores the unknowability of women in the penal system with unflinching candor and empathy. By sheer coincidence, I started reading this book days after wrapping my role as a CO on Orange is the New Black; you might think a novel set primarily in a women's prison was the last thing I wanted to read. But it was the perfect compliment to the feeling of helplessness I felt after leaving set. Romy Hall is not a victim, though she has been relentlessly dealt bad hands. The CO response to any inmate outcry or plea for mercy that weaves throughout this book--That if such-and-such is so important to you, you should have thought of that before you did whatever landed you in prison--rings hollow and naïve as it should. It's a mantra that corrections officers, especially the women, supply with religious stubbornness in hopes that they'll continue to believe that there is any difference at all between themselves and the incarcerated. The narrative in this novel is handed off from prisoner to prisoner to civilian worker and back again. The criminals depicted are not always incarcerated, and the prisoners often seem guilty of little more than losing the game in which they're dealt the worst hand. In spite of it all, this book is not depressing. It's raw and candid, but vivid and urgent and beautiful. Usually when writers knock it out of the park with one book, their next is a little easy or dull. But that's not Kushner's deal. My only regret is that I'll have to wait so long for her next project.

A breath-taking, whirlwind of a novel. Not for the faint of heart, the novel swirls around a women's prison, focusing on a single mother recently incarcerated for a life sentence. As Kushner takes on a tour of those surrounding the main character, we are taken through various time periods, prisons, and escape routes. The novel is haunting, and I'm sure will be a huge hit.

‘The Mars Room” is a gritty, get-down-in-the-dirt novel, and I liked it!

Rachel Kushner gives us a rough lead character named Romy Hall, and by the end of her story, readers will either love or hate her. It’s her interaction with a contracted teacher that gives insight into the desperation of seeking freedom whether from a prison or life’s hard knocks.

Some say the character of Gordon Hauser, a teacher in a fictional women’s prison, is the storyteller in the novel, but I disagree. Romy is a woman of strength in a rough setting, whether it’s at the Mars Room where she’s a stripper, or as an inmate sentenced for murder. Her love for her son is complete, despite the circumstances and her failed attempts at motherhood. That deep emotional need to be with him is what gets Romy out of her cell bunk each morning. It’s what pushes her to take action – for good or bad.

Kushner describes an environment of give and take, and each has its own intentions. Does a man surround himself with woman purely with no desires but to help? Does a woman, imprisoned or not, seek out men without ulterior motives? In “The Mars Room,” is there room for selfless giving?

The author has said in interviews that she wanted to know more about the our society’s structural use of prisons. Yet she also insists her book is not a “prison” novel, but only a novel. I can’t say if her description and perceptions are right or wrong since I’ve never been in her characters’ shoes. I can say, though, that Kushner touched me with her words.

'Certain women in prison make rules for everyone else, and the woman insisting on quiet was one of those. If you follow their rules, they make more rules. You have to fight people or you end up with nothing.'

Everything has already been taken from Romy Hall, but at what point did her life, her little boy Jackson begin to drift away? With two consecutive life sentences to be served at the Stanville Women’s Correctional Facility in California’s Central Valley, tears will get her nowhere. The worst part of it all, her life was ruined over a stalker who wasn’t even her own! The book is so gritty I have to wash my eyes, and its wonderful for all its squalor. Working in a sleazy strip club, Romy has a little boy to raise, she does what she has to. Maybe she’s into drugs here and there, and stuck in the underbelly she’s learned how to handle herself, she certainly doesn’t make candy coated excuses for who she is. Don’t expect an anti-drug PSA, Romy loved the feelings drugs induced and won’t tell you otherwise. She is still the victim, regardless of what the court decided. Her life has been grim from the start, that it got far worse is evident from the beginning where she is being transported as a part of ‘Chain Night’, her first time. The women prisoners all have their chaos to impart on the reader, no hope for any of them, some happy to be back in prison, which like their families before them is a given, is as much a home as the outside. Naturally it’s shocking, some seem born under an unlucky star, others’ self-made luck simply ran out. At times, the games they played changed, played them.Or maybe, maybe something is wrong in their blood. The good are sometimes ugly, the bad are sometimes beautiful. This is the bottom of the well, there is nothing left to lose, there is no future, so why bother?

The stories bleed all over the pages, jump around like an addict in search of their next fix, and there is no redemption at all. No one is going to raise their hand in victory, crowing about how they always said they were innocent and now they’re free. No one is really inocent, least of all Romy, but what exactly did she do? Why? It doesn’t matter, because no one is going to fight for her, she doesn’t have the money that would be available to a different class of woman. It is a story about class, isn’t it?

You can’t look away, which is awful because this is someone’s misery, their absolute hell. It’s putting the book down and thinking, thank God it’s not me, like Romy once believed, until it was her. These sordid tales are like visiting another planet for some of us, we feel so far above it all, don’t we? Fictional, yes, but for others this type of life is a given, and the first thing we’ll say, “Well, why don’t they pull themselves out of it?” What soft, safe lives some of us live, through the lottery of our birth. There is a line that hits you between the eyes, it’s so true that when the ‘haves’ commit crimes it’s often excused as disorder. “We were not kleptomaniacs. That’s a term for rich people who steal by compulsion.”

Don’t be fooled, there is corruption everywhere, the disease of greed, power visits many hearts. For some, their fall is simply self-preservation. The cast of characters in The Mars Room is of many colors, genders, and ages; some with power and others without. What an ugly novel, just as it should be! So good!

Publication Date: May 1, 2018

Scribner

'The Mars Room' by Rachel Kushner follows the story of Romy Hall and her incarceration in Stanville Prison, serving two consecutive life sentences. Romy had a rough life, a mother who wasn't there for her, and a harsh lifestyle that included sex work (including giving lap dances at a club called The Mars Room). Romy’s past life and present situation intersects with two other stories, Gordon Hauser (a teacher at the prison) and Doc (a male prisoner).

I had a lot of hope for this novel but found it to be rather boring. I felt like nothing really happened in “The Mars Room”. I didn’t particularly like Romy (at least there was nothing that made me connect to and feel for her) and didn’t feel sorry for her, except for when she was upset about missing her son. I was confused as to why Doc’s story was included. I felt like the book would not have suffered if his side story were cut. The only person that I enjoyed reading and wanted to know more about was Gordon. He was the only character that I could feel any sort of connection to. I really wanted to like this book (and I normally enjoy dark, bleak stories), but I didn’t find anything within worth liking.

Thanks to Scribner and Netgalley for the ARC.

Hopes were high, inevitably, for this one, after the thrilling Flame Throwers, but the new novel isn’t as strong. What it is is another powerful act of immersion by this miraculously Insightful writer, this time into prison culture. Kushner evokes the seamy lives of multiple characters, their worse or better natures, their aching selves. But the structure is loose and the overall effect a little directionless. Plot isn’t this author’s greatest strength or interest, but there’s even less of it here, more vignettes and not quite enough resolution. Nevertheless I’d take Kushner over so many other writers, any day.

The Mars Room is a provocative, raveworthy exploration of choices or, should I say, the way some criminals--especially females on the lower echelon of the socio-economic scale who grew up sexually abused, heavily involved in drugs and/or engaged in prostitution or some sex-related trade--have no choice in where and how they are raised, the societal effect being the counterproductive institutionalization of a legion of women, repetitive recidivism and a concomitant vicious generational cycle.

Ms. Kushner is approaching mastery in portraying authentic 20-something females from the outer fringes who contain a multitude of layers. She smartly does not try to excuse the crimes of the characters using a societal justification nor does she downplay the woman's free will, or choice, in committing the crime. Rather, as all great authors, she deftly sculpts hard truths, between lines, behind bars, and through an array of colorful supporting characters.

The book acts as an indictment of a legal system that would push public defenders to "plead out," not to "buck the system," and, when they do actually try a case at the client's insistence, engage in shoddy trial practices showing a reckless indifference to duty and justice. For example, in the trial of the accused 28-year-old protagonist for the murder of her stalker, failing to fight to prove that she was brazenly and relentlessly stalked by the "victim" over several months, timidly allowing the prosecutor to win exclusion of such evidence on the shameful grounds that its introduction would impermissibly allow the jury to consider "the victim's prior conduct" in determining the guilt of the accused, which is a bass ackwards way of turning the Rape Shield Law on its head; all of which resulted in the conviction of the young woman and her sentencing to consecutive life sentences.

The novel offers a sublime and visceral reflection on the context of it all in the vastness and beauty of the mountains surrounding a California women's correctional facility in which the protagonist is imprisoned, using and comparing the journals of Thoreau and Ted Kaczynski.

Ms. Kushner has brilliantly structured a memorable, arresting, and enduring novel that should change the reader's perceptions of present/former children of the streets and of foster homes and which shows how they view the world around them much differently than do most. In some ways more perceptive than those caught in the rat race, but in others, particularly when growing up, they've been blinded by dire circumstances: "What I eventually came to understand, about San Francisco, was that I was immersed in beauty and barred from seeing it."


Thank you, NetGalley and Scribner, for providing me an advance copy of this novel in return for an honest review.

I was so looking forward to this one. But, it did not gel for me at all. Meanwhile, I am reading another netgalley book, A Little Piece of Light by Donna Hylton, which is a non-fiction memoir about a woman in prison which is much more readable and I am liking better - in great part because it is true.