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A review by sctittle
The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner
4.0
Kushner delivers a glancing blow to mass incarceration in this novel that is in turn hard-bitten and transcendent. Why is Romy in a maximum security women’s prison doing consecutive life terms? We don’t ever completely find out, but Kushner keeps the possibility of the “truth” dangling over us as she jumps back and forth in time. Romy narrates her own story, but she also tells us about the other women in the prison, most of whom are helpless and hopeless against a system that holds all the cards. The grayness and vacuity of life in that prison give the novel a bleak edge, turns the humor black, and renders the occasional scenes of beauty as refreshing as a river running through a desert.
Kushner’s writes with commanding presence. She is tough/gentle in just the right way and she one-ups Joan Didion with her portrait of contemporary California, where she takes us to San Francisco’s seediest neighborhood (you can feel the damp fog); inside LA strip clubs and subpar housing; and on a memorable bus ride through the Central Valley, where the almond groves are farmed by machinery and the mountains loom in the distance as if to remind us that nature is not person-made. One of the most heartbreaking scenes takes place when Romy looks up at the night sky and sees the Milky Way for the first--and she realizes--the last time: “Where people are gone, the world opens. Where people are gone, the night falls upward, black and unmanned."
Throughout Kushner reminds us of all the contradiction this prison in California represents: there is endless space and suffocating constriction; men and women inhabiting bodies they don’t accept; breathtaking beauty and fecundity being engineered by machines; and the urge to live, even to flourish, in deadening surroundings. She also presents a foil for Romy in the form of a GED teacher whose career is going nowhere but who, ultimately, and unlike Romy, is able to escape.
Parts of this novel fell flat for me. There’s a one-dimensional cop gone bad whose presence doesn’t add much to the story and some bewildering (to me) references to Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber)’s journal. Also, there are a few passages where the fruits of Kushner’s research filter through like passages from a high-school term paper. But for the most part Kushner is driving this novel like a motorcycle over the 101, stopping every once in a while to appreciate an awesome sunset, and then riding off into it.
Kushner’s writes with commanding presence. She is tough/gentle in just the right way and she one-ups Joan Didion with her portrait of contemporary California, where she takes us to San Francisco’s seediest neighborhood (you can feel the damp fog); inside LA strip clubs and subpar housing; and on a memorable bus ride through the Central Valley, where the almond groves are farmed by machinery and the mountains loom in the distance as if to remind us that nature is not person-made. One of the most heartbreaking scenes takes place when Romy looks up at the night sky and sees the Milky Way for the first--and she realizes--the last time: “Where people are gone, the world opens. Where people are gone, the night falls upward, black and unmanned."
Throughout Kushner reminds us of all the contradiction this prison in California represents: there is endless space and suffocating constriction; men and women inhabiting bodies they don’t accept; breathtaking beauty and fecundity being engineered by machines; and the urge to live, even to flourish, in deadening surroundings. She also presents a foil for Romy in the form of a GED teacher whose career is going nowhere but who, ultimately, and unlike Romy, is able to escape.
Parts of this novel fell flat for me. There’s a one-dimensional cop gone bad whose presence doesn’t add much to the story and some bewildering (to me) references to Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber)’s journal. Also, there are a few passages where the fruits of Kushner’s research filter through like passages from a high-school term paper. But for the most part Kushner is driving this novel like a motorcycle over the 101, stopping every once in a while to appreciate an awesome sunset, and then riding off into it.