The Mars Room: A Novel
May 2018 · Sold by Simon and Schuster
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8 reviews
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352
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About this ebook
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
“Gritty, empathic, finely rendered, no sugar toppings, and a lot of punches, none of them pulled.” —Margaret Atwood
“The real deal, jarring, horrible, compassionate, funny.” —Stephen King
An instant New York Times bestseller from two-time National Book Award finalist Rachel Kushner, The Mars Room is a stunning novel about life incarceration in a women’s prison, class, and the American justice system, set between San Francisco and California’s Central Valley.
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 poverty, power, motherhood, and mass incarceration 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).
“Gritty, empathic, finely rendered, no sugar toppings, and a lot of punches, none of them pulled.” —Margaret Atwood
“The real deal, jarring, horrible, compassionate, funny.” —Stephen King
An instant New York Times bestseller from two-time National Book Award finalist Rachel Kushner, The Mars Room is a stunning novel about life incarceration in a women’s prison, class, and the American justice system, set between San Francisco and California’s Central Valley.
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 poverty, power, motherhood, and mass incarceration 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).
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
“Gritty, empathic, finely rendered, no sugar toppings, and a lot of punches, none of them pulled.” —...
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Ratings and reviews
8 reviews
Nicki Gunn
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December 3, 2019
I liked these characters. I liked how open ended some storylines were because that's real life. I recognized some subplots from real life events and thought that was a nice touch. The ok only negative I had was I felt the backstory in the first 40 pages took too long. I almost stopped because I didn't need all that space taken to prove to me she grew up wild in SF, taking drugs and whatnot. I got it. Once it dove back into the actual story, I really enjoyed it.
2 people found this review helpful
Tina Moon
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August 19, 2018
Terrible and disjointed.
1 person found this review helpful
Woolford London
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April 6, 2019
Meh. But I did finish it.
1 person found this review helpful
About the author
Rachel Kushner is the author of the New York Times bestseller 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 National Book Critics Circle Award, the Folio Prize, and was twice a finalist for the Booker Prize and the National Book Award in Fiction. Creation Lake was also longlisted for the National Book Award. 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 have been translated into twenty-seven languages.
Rachel Kushner is the author of the New York Times bestseller 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 ...
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