The Mars Room

Do not think for one minute that when you start Rachel Kushners THE MARS ROOM you will be able to put it down. This novel is other worldly amusing, with characters so good they charm and repulse you, and a storyline that is fraught with doom from the first page.

To say that Kushner is a master storyteller would be the understatement of 2018. To tell you that her characters, each with a life story so intriguing, how they walk and talk to the point that you forget youre reading because it feels like they are in front of you. Well, I just told you. She wrote it and you ought to read it.

Romy, the protagonist, is on a prison bus with her soon to be prison mates, headed to a new location. The ride and these people alone are an indication of how bleak things are going to get as she is in for one brutal two life sentences with no parole situation.

There are codes, rules between inmates, and ways to keep yourself alive within prison. Romy can play this game. She was doing it long before she was behind bars. But by no means is it easy. The struggle is real.

A literary light is kindled for Romy when she meets a prison teacher who takes note of her interest and feeds her curiosity with great books. This is just one of many layers to the story.

There is an overriding sense of sadness that I felt for each of these women. Even though they are fictional, and each ended up incarcerated of their own doing, some for unthinkable crimes, I could not help but think of their circumstances and how their endgame was inevitable. One takeaway for me is that people are no different whether they have freedom or not. Alliances are formed, stereotypes are prevalent, the weak do not survive, bigotry and hatred abound, a keen sense of intellect is learned quickly inside, and the ignorant are loud.

Ooh wee, THE MARS ROOM is one fine, entertaining, and knock-out book. I cant get enough of Kushners writing. Whats next.

What in the actual…??? I would give this book zero stars if I could. I read it for book club and it was chosen because it was so critically acclaimed. Honestly all that means in the end is that I have lost all faith in the competency of literary critics. Most of my book club didnt actually bother finishing. And those couple of us that did finish were only more disappointed.

I mostly finished because it was a quick read and ultimately a train wreck: I did not want to watch, but I couldnt look away. So I guess it was riveting???? But thats the best you could say about it. And it definitely was not a good kind of riveting, or even a provocative kind of riveting, though the subject matter was promising in that it *could* have been very provocative in a good way. I kept wanting to like it. And that wound up making me even more mad.

Basically I dont even know what I just read. And neither did anyone else in my book club. The writing is schizophrenic. The author often did not use complete sentences. The paragraphs, chapters, and overall narrative were all over the place; utterly non cohesive.

The book has a protagonist…I think? There is one character at least whos story is the most central, but there are enough random bits of head hopping and aimless wandering down other potential plot trails (that ultimately do nothing and go nowhere) that I cant even quite call Romy the protagonist. I struggle with that title, too, because typically the protagonist is someone you root for and well, there were exactly zero of those characters to be found, except for perhaps Romys son, who sadly we never really learn that much about, and his fate is definitively unknown.

Theres no discernible plot. Theres no discernible point. There are no likeable characters. New characters POVs are introduced completely at random and with no apparent point, plot device or otherwise. Then just as randomly they leave; or are left entirely unresolved. Not only does the story head hop like a hot potato, but the narration actually switches from first to third person narrative ultimaty at complete random. 90% of the narration seems to at least be sensical and consistent: main character is written in first person, and side characters are written in third. A bit disorienting, but you put it together and it makes sense. Then halfway through suddenly side characters whom we previously viewed through third person are the first person narrator and then just as suddenly it switches again. I had whiplash.

There are also a random few chapters that we could only presume are intended to be excerpts from a book mentioned within the book? They were clearly distinct because they were suddenly in a different font, which as a book designer was appalling to see, but no one had a clue what on earth their purpose was, and as to whose story it was supposed to be, we had a flimsy guess and nothing more. The whole thing was just a disaster.

It is gritty. And Im not against gritty. But it ultimately just reads like it is trying way waaaaaay too hard to make about twelve different possible moral points: about the dysfunction of society, or the injustice of the legal system, or the fact that human beings are complex characters and more gray than black or white, or the unfairness of life if you happen to be born in certain circumstances, or possibly about how life is just a meaningless cycle and so nothing matters? Or possibly that anyone would do the same in these characters situations??? I have honestly no idea. All of these are possible but improbable because it was so fantastic a failure of execution that I couldnt honestly tell you. All it really achieved was a certain snooty air that made it infinitely worse. You keep hoping that it would make a point: any point! Any one of those arrogant but at least definitive moral points…..but it never did. You WANTED Romy to turn out to have been wrongfully or even dubiously sentenced; for the pointless violence and injustice of the system (which actually is a real issue!) to be made clear…..but the point was never made. If anything, it shot itself in the foot because in her case (and actually in every character we meet except for maybe one), I would say justice was in fact delivered fairly.

So really, in the end, if were giving out awards for best at being the most riveting train wreck of a steaming pile of nightmarish nihilistic schizophrenic literary garbage, then this book takes the cake. 0/10, would not recommend.

Rachel Kushner is a real talent, and the writing is at times terrific in this sympathetic portrayal of a life without hope. However, as in the case of My Absolute Darling, I wonder how degraded human experience can enrich the world. Rather, how explicit the rendition of that experience needs to be. Or how many subcultures are worthy of such attention. Perhaps to my detriment, I see a difference between Arundhati Roys Ministry of Utmost Happiness and The Mars Room, not because the subject matter is so different the travails of outsiders whom others see as subhuman but because of the behaviors of the protagonists and the descriptions of life itself. Bone and gristle and bodily fluids are not necessarily additive, and this novel had too much of them per unit of insight. Balzac and Dickens described the demimonde, and I, for one, would not have asked them for more detail.

Although it was interesting to read the story of women inmates that isn’t OITNB. But … The book was poorly executed. The writing and imagery and characters were interesting, but their stories were never really completely fleshed out or brought to some kind of denouement. They just ended. In the case of Hauser, unexpectedly. And then the ending! The book didn’t wrap story lines up; it just stopped — a cop out, if you ask me. It was almost like the author was writing along and she or her editor decided the book was long enough and she just needed to quit.

If this is one of the best books available now, we’re all in trouble. Poorly written, and somewhat disgusting. The content and style are so tedious, I never made it all the way to the end. Readers who need to know more about life in prison will enjoy it and thrive. I already had accurate impressions of institutions and the sad characters who inhabit them. I read books for enlightenment and entertainment, and I could get none from this book.

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