The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner
From the author of internationally acclaimed The Flamethrowers – a fearless and heartbreaking novel about love, friendship and incarceration.
**THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**
Romy Hall is at the start of two consecutive life sentences, plus six years, at Stanville Women's Correctional Facility. Outside is the world from which she has been permanently severed: the San Francisco of her youth, changed almost beyond recognition. The Mars Room strip club where she once gave lap dances for a living. And her seven-year-old son, Jackson, now in the care of Romy's estranged mother.
Inside is a new reality to adapt to: thousands of women hustling for the bare essentials needed to survive. The deadpan absurdities of institutional living, which Kushner details with humour and precision. Daily acts of violence by guards and prisoners alike. Allegiances formed over liquor brewed in socks, and stories shared through sewage pipes.
Romy sees the future stretch out ahead of her in a long, unwavering line - until news from outside brings a ferocious urgency to her existence, challenging her to escape her own destiny and culminating in a climax of almost unbearable intensity. Through Romy - and through a cast of astonishing characters populating The Mars Room - Rachel Kushner presents not just a bold and unsentimental panorama of life on the margins of contemporary America, but an excoriating attack on the prison-industrial complex.
About the Author
Rachel Kushner’s debut novel, Telex from Cuba, was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award and a New York Times bestseller. Her follow-up novel, The Flamethrowers , was also a finalist for the National Book Award and received rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. Her fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s and the Paris Review. She lives in Los Angeles.
Format: Paperback | 352 pages
Dimensions (cm): 19.7 x 12.8 x 2.1 | 288g
Publication Date: 16 Apr 2019
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK
Imprint: Vintage
Publication City/Country: London, United Kingdom
Language: English
ISBN10: 0099589966
ISBN13: 9780099589969
Condition: Very Good
A book that does not look new and has been read but is in excellent condition. Very minimal damage to the cover, including very, very minor scuff marks along the edges. No missing or damaged pages, no creases or tears, and no underlining/highlighting of text or writing in the margins. Very minimal wear and tear.