Published by Scribner
Publication date: May 1, 2018
Genres: Book Clubs, Contemporary, Fiction, Literary, Social Issues
There isn’t any status in it unless you’d be impressed to know that the Mars Room is not a middling or mediocre strip club but is definitely the worst and most notorious, the very seediest and most circuslike place there is.
In stark contrast to all that was warm and lovely in Monday’s book, Tin Man, I’m back today with a book that probably worked because it was completely different. The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner is harsh—all jutting angles and discordant tones and so utterly dissimilar to Tin Man that I couldn’t mentally compare the two and find one to be lacking. The Mars Room is a strip club in San Francisco where Romy Hall worked as a lap dancer. Virtually unparented for most of her life, Romy fends for herself in the way she knows how. When one of her regulars took his obsession with her too far, she killed him, but without proper representation his unhinged stalking never comes to light in her trial. Life has nowhere to go but down after that, not that it was ever looking up.
Romy has only just arrived at Stanville Correctional facility to begin her two life sentences when she learns her mother is dead. Not emotional or impactful news for her, except that her mother was taking care of Romy’s 7-year-old son. Her inability to get any answers about his whereabouts leads her into a mental and emotional freefall and is at the center for every choice she makes after that.
Romy is the main character in The Mars Room, but Kushner uses her as the base around which the novel’s other players run. There is Gordon Hauser, who teaches class at the prison and is drawn to her because she is educated and engages in learning. He has his own share of issues—being rightly troubled by the way he sees guards abusing inmates,
Still, Geronomina, and Sanchez, and Candy, all of them were people who suffered and along the way of their suffering they made others suffer, and Gordon could not see that making them suffer lifelong would accrue to justice. It added new harm to old…
but not making the best decisions in response.
There are other inmates, each with their own lives of marginalization and a lack of options. Each layers their story onto the other in what becomes a miasma of misery and desperation. These are people with few choices and most of them bad.
For the most part these stories add to Romy’s without detracting but there are other brief chapters that spring from one of Hauser’s conversations with a friend. They’re the writings of an unnamed character who could be either Thoreau or the Unabomber. What?! They interfere with the story, bringing it to a full stop and I was never able to figure out either who was speaking or their purpose.
The Mars Room will draw the inevitable comparison to Orange is the New Black and rightly so. It is about a woman’s prison and it does highlight, in pitch black perfection, the darkness of life in these facilities, but just as there are a million tales about young women coming-of-age, and I read and enjoy many of them, so there is room for more representation in this group. And even though the novel’s grip is loosened in the chapters that felt like complete non-sequiturs, Kushner is still doing what I like my fiction to do—showing me life outside my own experiences.
The thing is you keep existing whether you have a plan to do so or not, until you don’t exist, and then your plans are meaningless.
i can’t wait to read this one!
Lovely review, Catherine. I’m not sure this one is for me but I can certainly appreciate it.
Thank you. I can think of other books that portrayed the prison system better. Kushner does a good job, but the split stories are jarring- especially the ones I could never even figure out.
Thoreau or the Unabomber, wha?? Oh my. It sounds like it worked partly for you. I’m a bit on the fence about picking it up. hmm
Hm. I like Orange is the New Black for the same reason you liked this one–it’s outside my experience–but I’ve read several reviews of this that mention distracting elements that take away from the central story. While I’m intrigued by the premise, I’m not sure I’ll be rushing to pick this up.
Absolutely the case. I wavered on my rating because of the elements I mentioned like that (one of which I still have NO idea about), but I liked the Kushner’s writing and the women’s stories enough to go with 3 stars.
I canceled my library hold on this one. Too many lukewarm reviews from people I trust and too many books out there I want to read!
Like your Cookie Banner 🙂
Ha! I don’t know how long I’m going to keep that silly thing up. I’ve gotten along for 6 years without it so unless it’s legally required…
I think you might have DNFed The Mars Room for it’s abruptness in changing narrators AND the wacky, unnamed dude chapters. I liked her writing and the stories of Romy and the other women.
I was half hoping to see 1-2 stars here, as I’ve been torn about this one. Since it’s not lighting me on fire, I think I will try to resist despite the awesome cover.
I was hovering at 2.5 for a long time. Somehow the further away I get from it the more mellow I get about its shortcomings. Resist- I don’t think there’s anything in it that you haven’t seen in some way somewhere else.
What a great review, Catherine! You may already know how I felt about this one, but I’ll just add that I do think this is a wonderful contribution to this experience, than many are disconnected from, and I thought Kushner did a great job with it. Her writing felt unique and authentic in a way that really resonated with me.
That’s why I ended up with 3 stars for it, Tara. I didn’t get parts of it, but they were not the prison experience parts. I think there is tons more room for these kind of marginalized women books. And a lot of the prison stuff I highlighted and wondered ‘is this true?’ Sadly, I bet it is.