I've read a few nonfiction books recently on life in prison, and I thought a fictional account of a women's prison would continue to aid me in understanding this type of life. A good portion of this book takes place in the prison and there are some interesting scenes of getting to the prison, intake, and life with cell roommates, but a probably equal portion of the book tells about the main character's life before prison. She grew up on the streets of San Francisco with a mother who didn't care much for her, and she became a stripper. The truth of her crime is not revealed until the end although it is hinted at throughout the book. The most emotional part of the book is the fact that she has a young son, and she has been sentenced to life in prison. There is also another weird side story about a teacher that works at the prison. Ultimately, this book wasn't what I thought it was and it lacked depth and continuity. Throughout the whole book, even at the end, I was only getting bits and pieces, and it was hard to fit them together.

“I sometimes think San Francisco is cursed. I mostly think it’s a sad suckville of a place. People say it’s beautiful, but the beauty is only visible to newcomers, and invisible to those who had to grow up there.”

In Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room, 29 year-old Romy Hall is serving two life sentence (plus an additional six years) for something bad, something she actually admits she did. As the old saying goes, prisons are full of innocent men and women, but in this case, Romy is guilty and now lives out her life at the Stanville Women’s Correctional facility in Northern California.

The mars room

The novel opens very strongly with Romy, being transferred from one prison to another, describing a bus ride “up the valley” It’s two a.m., the women are shackled and counted, and Romy watches the world go by from the bus window. One pregnant 15-year-old is “in the cage on account of her age, to protect her from the rest of us,” but her whimpering attracts the attention of a more aggressive prisoner. This scene sets the stage for the story which centres on society’s outcasts: one woman who murdered her own child, trans Conan, and the novel’s central character, Romy Hall who grew up in the Sunset area of San Francisco. Running wild and unchecked, by age 11 Romy meets trouble; soon she’s more or less a street kid, shoplifting, doing drugs and eventually living in the Tenderloin, working in the Mars Room, a seedy strip joint:

If you showered you had a competitive edge at the Mars Room. If your tattoos were misspelled you were hot property. If you weren’t five or six months pregnant, you were the it-girl in the club that night. Girls maced customers in the face and sent us all outside, hacking and choking. One dancer got mad at d’Artagnan. the night manager, and set the dressing room on fire. She was let go, it’s true, but that was exceptional.

In prison, Romy is surrounded by poor, disenfranchised women–women who’ve had terrible things happen to them, terrible things done to them, and who’ve been altered as a result:

I said everything was fine but nothing was. The life was being sucked out of me. The problem was not moral. It was nothing to do with morality. These men dimmed my glow. Made me numb to touch, and angry. I gave, and got something in exchange, but it was never enough. I extracted from the wallets–which was how I thought of the men, as walking wallets–as much as I possible could. The knowledge that it was not a fair exchange coated me in a certain film.

The novel, which moves from first to third person narrator, goes back over Romy’s past so that we eventually learn the path that led her to prison but then there’s also claustrophobic prison life. The other prisoners Romy mentions seem types rather than individuals: a masculine looking trans and a “butch security force.”

Another main character is Gordon Hauser, and while he’s a teacher who works in the prison, there’s also something lost about him. He never finished his PhD, was teaching community college as an adjunct, and ends up teaching in prisons because it’s steady work. Gordon retreats to the Sierra foothills where he reads Ted Kaczynski.

Romy’s strong voice is not entirely unsympathetic, but I suspect this is because her intelligence is evident :

Something brewed in me over the years I worked at the Mars Room, sitting in laps, deep into this flawed exchange. This thing in me brewed and foamed. And when I directed it–a decision that was never made; instead, instincts took over–that was it.

Through Romy, the novel tackles some big questions, but ultimately, for this reader, the tale was relentlessly depressing and a rather bludgeoning experience. The novel’s message re: justice for poor females who are frequently victims in various ways, and end up behind bars as fodder for American’s prison system, makes a social-conscience novel which is heavy-handed, one directional, and unsubtle. The correctional officers are fat, stupid, abusive etc. Wentworth, a favourite Australian series of mine, in spite of being occasionally over the top, addressed the same issues, but somehow the intimacy, plot, social issues and moral grey areas were much better defined.

I had a friend, a correctional officer, who told me the women were the ‘worst” and he preferred working in a men’s prison. I thought of him as I read this.

Review copy

The Mars Room is a book that I was highly anticipating. I was certain it was going to be one of my new favorite reads! And that leaves me wondering if my lukewarm reaction to it was a reflection of my too high expectations. Maybe it would have been a 4 star for me if I wasn’t so excited? I guess we’ll never know.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it was a decent book. It was fine. The character development and writing style worked for me. But what really saved the book for me was the setting, the author’s descriptions were dead on (I’m from the Central Valley of California so…), often making me feel like I was really there, like I was home. So, in many ways, it was the familiarity that I connected with.

Oddly, I feel a little guilty about not loving it. Like somehow I, the reader, missed out on something the first time around, and maybe I should try it again before making a final judgment. At least my expectations would be lower in a reread. Yeah, probably not gonna happen.

Ultimately, it was meh for me. Wanted to desperately to love it, but it just didn’t work out.

This book presents a raw vision of the criminal justice system and life inside prisons. Though we meet many inmates, the main character is Romy Hall who is serving two consecutive life sentences for killing her stalker. Romy has a young son and must learn to navigate her new reality.

I must admit I researched the author because the description of life behind bars feel as if this was a firsthand account. It turns out she interviewed many inmates to create an authentic experience for the reader. I don't know about others, but this reader appreciated it.

Romy Hall is just beginning her life sentence at a women’s prison. She’s young and has had a difficult life, and tries not to think about the young son she has left on the outside. We get a lot of information about her past, and the sordid jobs she took to provide for her son. It’s very realistic, a hard-hitting look at socioeconomic factors, gender, and poverty.

We also get other narratives: from Romy’s prison friend, from a GED teacher working with the inmates, and even the man Romy has been convicted of murdering. I liked these other stories, but ultimately wondered why they were included, especially that of the naive GED teacher.

This prison novel is steeped in character study, which always appeal to me. But be warned, this isn’t a happy book, or even a mildly optimistic one. It does beg many important questions about empathy and blame. Do we feel for these women, even those convicted of murder? How do we reconcile these crimes with the daily struggles of their lives?

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an arc.

For the most part, The Mars Room and Our Kind of Cruelty are two very different books. One has a female narrator, one a male. One takes place in the United States, the other in the United Kingdom. One involves people with little to nothing, the other involves people who have more money than they can spend. One reads like a memoir, the other reads like a love letter. There should be nothing that connects these two very different stories to one another, except there is one key element in both. The portrayal of the women, their supposed crimes, and subsequent punishments are unfair and but unfortunately all too commonplace in society's ongoing perpetuation of rape culture.

In The Mars Room, we get a down-and-dirty look at prison life for women and a glimpse into the milieu for which prison is one of the only options available to them. For those readers like me who grew up with a modicum of privilege, Romy's life before her sentencing is an eye-opening experience. Ms. Kushner portrays the downtrodden - the homeless, the junkies, the alcoholics, the poorest of the poor - with dedication and delicacy, neither making excuses for them nor softening the harsh truths of their existence but doing so in a way that is not exploitative nor sensationalized. She portrays Romy's life with empathy and an attention to detail that highlights her detailed research into the California prison system and experience of life on the streets. Given her careful research, it makes Romy's case that much more infuriating - because you know this is one novel in which fiction is fact and that there is someone in Romy's exact situation sitting in jail for the wrong reason and with no recourse for justice. The Mars Room is by no means an easy read, nor should it be for those who will never be forced to sell their body for money or who will never know what it feels like to literally have no food and no money to buy some. However, it is a book which should be required reading as it shines a light on the prison system and the prejudices and discrimination that exist for women within it.

While The Mars Room is a hard-hitting, behind-the-scenes true story type novel, Our Kind of Cruelty reminds me of Caroline Kepnes' You. The problem is that Mike is no Joe, neither as well-read nor as charming. Mike's tragic childhood does make him a sympathetic character and his love for V is as open and honest as you can get. Even while you start harboring doubts about Mike's version of reality, you still want him to get the girl in the end. That is right until you realize towards what Ms. Hall is driving. By then, all bets are off.

Both novels are important in the light they shine on women and the justice system. The lack of justice in both novels is infuriating, which is exactly the point. In this era of heightened awareness of gender treatment, we should be outraged by the injustice both Romy and V experience because Romy and V are all women. Novels like The Mars Room and Our Kind of Cruelty are vital for increasing awareness even further and providing avenues of dialogue necessary to make much-needed changes. Women are angry, and our anger is beginning to trickle into the arts in greater numbers in hopes of fostering such dialogue. The Mars Room and Our Kind of Cruelty are two new examples of women using their anger for good and provide two fantastic examples of gender bias to use in our arguments challenging it.

Great book in concept but executed poorly. I found it fascinating at times, the story lines were intriguing and heartbreaking but the style left much to be desired. I think a good edit could have tighten things up and made it more of a cohesive read. 3.5 stars.

I kept getting distracted and reading other books. The story was intriguing, but didn't hold my attention for long periods.

I didn't find the cover very appealing.

I really wanted to Iike this book. At first, I was really drawn to the story telling style—getting to know th character backstories and their lives before prison. Despite the overall Literary feel, I felt the pacing was too slow and introduction of characters too many to really get a lot of enjoyment out of. That said, I will be reading this book again at a later date to see if it was more me than the book itself since the blurb copy was so enticing.

This novel is beautiful and infuriating. I blew through it in a weekend because I couldn't put it down. I'm so glad this was the Powell's Books Indiespensable book club pick for May!

This is a dark, depressing, and somewhat confusing novel. I wanted to like Romy but the best feeling I could work up with was pity. The writing in the book is very good, showing the gritty side of life that I hope I never experience firsthand. But it’s the jumping around in time, place, and point of view that ultimately disappointed me. I would have rathered the author stick to Romy’s story more.

Romy isn’t quite sure where she went wrong. What is this decision? Or that one? Now serving two consecutive life sentences, Romy examines her choices, starting in her wild and neglected childhood, and how her choices may not have been choices at all.

Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room is a remarkable novel about life in prison, life leading up to prison, and those that cross the path of prisoners – fellow inmates, a well-meaning GED teacher, the police officers and lawyers involved in the justice system. The timeline moves back and forth, and to multiple characters, although it primarily sticks with Romy (though there are even excerpts by convicted Unabomber Ted Kaczynski). It’s difficult to do this hard, humane novel justice in so few words, but it’s a thoughtful, nuanced story of the circumstances and decisions that, in the end, make up an entire life.

From the linked review: “Kushner is a woman with the chops, ambition and killer instinct to rub shoulders with all those big, swinging male egos who routinely get worshipped as geniuses. In her new novel "The Mars Room," Kushner trades in "The Flamethrowers'" wooshing expensiveness for a slower, more muted vision of entrapment and isolation.”

3.5 stars

I read an in-depth article in New Yorker Magazine that made it apparent why Rachel Kushner can so vividly bring her characters in this book to life. (The link to the article is below.) She followed an inmate at a California prison because she wanted to have people in her life “that the State of California rendered invisible to others.” She brings these real people to us through a cast of characters in her fictional account of life in prison. This book definitely depicts experiences that are far removed from mine. Not just in the prison but the world where the prisoners came from - strip cubs , doing and dealing drugs, hit jobs, getting beaten, enduring abuse as children. I found this stressful to read and it was definitely out of my comfort zone. But that’s not a bad thing as I learned. It’s vulgar at times, brutal a lot of the time, raw most of the time and I assume pretty realistic given the research that the author has done.

While we come to know the stories of a number of characters, this felt like it was mostly Romy Hall’s story. A single mother, formerly a stripper at The Mars Room, Romy has killed a man who stalked her, is serving two consecutive life sentences plus 6 years . There are other inmates whose stories we learn - Fernandez, Bette, and Doc in the men’s prison. We come to know someone from the outside, Gordon Hauser, a prison teacher who gets involved in the lives of some of the inmates - mailing letters , buying them books, flower seeds, a paint set. Gordon seems to reflect what Kushner wants us to see - that these inmates are human beings.

It’s about the flaws in our society, the flaws in a justice system that won’t allow someone to tell their side of the story, the flaws in our penal system. It is also about the flaws of inmates at a California prison whose fate on the one hand is a result of their choices. However their circumstances, their lives before incarceration make it difficult to be unsympathetic.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/rachel-kushners-immersive-fiction


I received an advanced copy of this book from Scribner through NetGalley and Edelweiss.

This book was a bit disjointed with the story hopping back and forth between the main character Romy, and all the other characters' narratives. But! I loved reading this. I enjoyed the descriptions of San Francisco and the characters' personalities. This was another very well written book that I recommend without reservation. It is not the happiest story you'll ever read but it is interesting and well worth the time .

MAY 9, 2018 (EDIT)

Mini-Reviews: The May Fiction Edition
The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner
&
Alternative Remedies for Loss by Joanna Cantor

Novel Visits Mini-Reviews: The May Fiction Edition - The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner and Alternative Remedies to Loss by Joanna CantorSave

The Mars Room and Alternative Remedies for Loss have almost nothing in common. One is dark and very serious, the other is light with a humorous take. One is a debut, the other by an established author. In one I found hopefulness and in the other hopelessness. One is literary fiction, the other contemporary fiction. It could be argued that both are coming-of-age novels, but that would be a stretch. For me, the strongest commonality between these two May releases was grief. Grief suffered, grief endured by two very, very different young women.

Novel Visits Mini-Review The Mars Room by Rachel KushnerSaveThe Mars Room by Rachel Kushner
Publisher: Scribner
Release Date: May 1, 2018
Length: 352 pages
Amazon

From the Publisher: “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; and the deadpan absurdities of institutional living, which Kushner evokes with great humor and precision.”

My Thoughts: Let’s begin with what I liked most about The Mars Room and that can only be Rachel Kushner’s gorgeous writing. I highlighted many passages for many different reasons: striking imagery, overwhelming angst, startling revelations. Kushner does all that and more in this novel, moving it solidly into the literary fiction category.

With The Mars Room, Rachel Kushner tells the story of Romy Hall, a daughter, a stripper, and escort, a mother, a murderer. We meet Romy on the bus as she’s headed to Stanville Women’s Correctional Facility where she will serve out two consecutive life terms. As Kushner takes the reader deeper into Romy’s story, she reveals Romy’s past, her teen years in San Francisco, and her life as a stripper. We also see the other side of Romy, a not quite so tough young woman who wants more for her life and who very much loves her young son, Jackson. Of all the losses her prison sentence brings, none compare to loosing her son. The drudgery and terror of day-to-day life in prison also plays a large role in Romy’s story.

“Teardrop and Button, and other women around me, all working their Keaths: it was not the different from The Mars Room, except here they were preening and sellind their asses for prepackaged junk food. Or in Teardrop’s case, a bag of heroin.”

Had Kushner stuck with Romy, I’d have liked The Mars Room much more. Instead, she filled out her novel with the lives and crimes of the women Romy shared her life with at Stanville, and even prisoners in other facilities. While many of their stories were interesting in their own right, they also took up space that could have been dedicated to giving Romy a more complete story. The characters Kushner surrounded Romy with were rich in personality and shone a light (that I can only assume to be accurate) on prison life, but I was left with many unanswered questions about Romy herself.

Both heartbreaking and surprisingly funny, The Mars Room tells the tale of Romy Hall, who is at the start of two consecutive life sentences. What's compelling about this work is that it manages to keep a gentle grace and humanity while exploring the brutal realities of the American penal system for women.

This is actually two tales. One of a woman, Romy, who is in jail falsely accused and the other is a dirty cop, I can't remember his name, he wasn't worth it, who fears for his life everyday because of the people he has confined to those bars. The book tells of prison life seen from the eyes of these two characters. In the case of the woman, the story was sad but at the same time interesting.

The book starts with Romy being transported from county jail to prison in a bus with other inmates. It's sad, but by the way the people are talking on this bus you can really see their lack of knowledge. It is somewhat entertaining though.

This book is nothing like OITNB or Wentworth (both shows I watch). However, it is probably more true to Wentworth if your looking for a correlation. There are sex scenes, although it's more talk about it than anything and nothing like the ones in OITNB.

It's a dirty, gritty story about life in prison. If your looking for something fun, this is not for you. However, if you ever wondered about the days and days in a shared cell, this is a real eye-opener.

I found it to be an excellent read and thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I highly recommend it if your looking for real life grittiness.

Huge thanks to the great folks at Scribner and Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

There are some things about the criminal justice system, either on a state or federal level, that most people wouldn't even think to wonder about unless they were in the middle of them; it's amazing the amount of knowledge one can learn, after committing a crime. I began highlighting passages in The Mars Room within the first five pages and I ended up with over thirty items; it is now nearly impossible to select my favorites.

"Everything in prison is addressed to the woman for whom the red wedge is painted on the clock face, the imbecile. I’ve never met her. Plenty I have met in prison cannot read, and some cannot tell time, but that doesn’t mean they are not shrewd and superior individuals who can outsmart any egghead. People in prison are clever as hell. The imbecile the rules and signs are meant to address is nowhere to be found."

Romy Hall, the central voice of The Mars Room, is a former dancer at a strip club on Market Street in San Francisco. She is serving two life sentences, plus an additional six years, for attacking and killing a regular who began shadowing her on his Harley, turning up at her local market and, when she moved to Los Angeles to get away from him, on her front porch. The night she encountered him there, her young son, Jackson, was asleep in her arms; the extra six years on her sentence were for endangering a minor.

Instead of focusing on Romy's story, Kushner carefully introduces other characters with ties to the California Department of Corrections: attorneys, visitors, correctional officers, and victims. While some would argue will argue differently, I do not consider The Mars Room a "prison novel," per se; rather, it is a novel about the way in which individuals are affected by the prison system and a reminder that many, outside of the inmates, carry a life sentence on their shoulders.

"Much discussion among the women about the scum of the earth who worked as guards. He did not have the courage, or maybe it was the will, to ask if these women had ever known a prison guard. And why would he defend prison guards? He hated them himself. But if a person got outside their own bubble they would see that prison guards were poor people without reasonable options. One had just blown his head off in a guard tower at Salinas Valley. He could have told them this, engaged in corrective arguments with these women at the party. But wasn’t it obvious?"

Kushner's writing is phenomenal; the details are authentic and the characters are humanized in a way that detracts from the dehumanization of their environment. This isn't Orange is the New Black which, in my opinion, is playacting and tailored to the masses; this is what prison life is like, for the majority, and Kushner's sources definitely shared an accurate image of their experiences.

It's a dark, often heartbreaking tale, but it's worth soaking in because it is a world most will never discover, unless the proportion of incarcerated individuals continues to climb at its current rate. This won't be enjoyed or appreciated by everyone, and I can understand that; maybe it's like a certain type of inside joke: I guess you just had to be there.

The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner is a highly recommended drama set in a California women’s prison.

Romy Leslie Hall is serving two consecutive life sentences at the Stanville Women’s Correctional Facility in California's Central Valley because she killed a man. The man met her at The Mars Room, the strip joint in San Francisco where she worked, and was stalking her so she had to kill him. Now her mother has custody of her son, Jackson, and she is settling into prison life. Romy has always lived her life in the margins of society, using drugs, prostitution, committing crimes, and her guilt in never in question.

The guilt of the women she is imprisoned with is never in question either. Kushner follows the lives of the women and the treatment they receive from the guards and each other. She also explores all the details of life inside and how the women find a way to make their own society, of a sort. Along with Romy's story, and that of other women at Stanville, the lives of several other characters are explored in chapters, including Gordon Hauser, a GED teacher assigned to Stanville and "Doc," a dirty LAPD cop convicted of murder and in the Sensitive Needs block of New Folsom Prison. There are also included parts of the journal of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.

First, this is technically, a very well written novel. It demonstrates the amount of research that went into writing it and captures the brutal reality of the system and how it often fails those living in poverty. So, while I would agree with all reviewers who feel that The Mars Room is a searing look at the lives of those born into poverty and demonstrates their struggles, even while turning to drugs and a criminal lifestyle, it also managed to get a bit wordy and off-track when adding in the stories of other people who were only marginally connect to Romy's story. The novel lacked a wee bit of focus, which made it lose some of its power.

My rating was going to be a simple recommended, until the ending, which I felt was perfect for the novel and made slogging through some if it worth the experience. When the focus is on Romy, her experiences, her story, her life, the novel does an exceptional job capturing the realities of her life, often eloquently. It is the extras that didn't significantly add to the totality of the novel for me.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Scribner via Netgalley.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2018/05/the-mars-room.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2383757382
https://www.librarything.com/work/20895311/reviews/155683559
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