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The Mars Room

By: Rachel Kushner
Narrated by: Rachel Kushner
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Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Mars Room, written and read by Rachel Kushner.

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018**
**A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**

'An unforgettable novel.' DAILY TELEGRAPH
'More knowing about prison life [than Orange Is The New Black]... so powerful.' NEW YORK TIMES
'One of America's finest writers.' VOGUE

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 TheMars 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.

 Fiction Friendship Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Women's Fiction Solar System Mars
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Critic Reviews

It is an unforgettable novel, and leaves the reader in no doubt that Kushner is one of America’s greatest living authors.
One of the greatest novels I have read in years. Her prior novel, The Flamethrowers, was expansive and thrilling, but this is richer and deeper, more ambitious in its moral vision… an exhilarating, always surprising read.
When I finished reading The Mars Room, I immediately reread it because I didn’t want to leave its world… The Mars Room teems with quick and distinctive voices. (Max Liu)
Cements [Kushner's] status as one of America's finest writers.
I’ve been bowled over by Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room [about life in a women’s prison]. It’s astounding – very difficult to read but so beautifully done, and with such knowledge, although it doesn’t feel like a “researched” book. (Anne Tyler)
If you haven’t heard of Rachel Kushner yet, you soon will. The American novelist has earned comparisons to Jennifer Egan and Jonathan Franzen… [The Mars Room] makes for a compelling read. Imagine a darker version of "Orange Is The New Black".
[A] grainy and persuasive novel... This is a brooding book, one that dwells on Dostoyevskian notions of innocence and evil. It moves like a muscle car, oozing down the side roads of your mind. (Dwight Garner)
Kushner, a two-time National Book Award finalist, slowly and deliciously unfolds the tapestry of Romy’s backstory – infusing mystery and humor in unlikely places – while interrogating the harsh realities of the U.S. prison system. (Lucy Feldman)
Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room shows what happens when a smart writer gets truly serious. It is a necessary and compelling book, and this year’s must read. (Anne Enright)
It's her best book yet, another big step forward. (Jonathan Franzen)
All stars
Most relevant
A gritty and unflinching observation of life in a women’s prison. There’s no sugar coating in this novel, and at times can be stark and severe.
There are several important debates about how the system is often set up to fail those it serves: from the perspective of inmates, tutors, victims of crime and crooked Cops. his is an important read, humanizing inmates serving life sentences & posing the question: are we all a few poor choices away from the same fate?

For fans of orange is the new black

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Rachel Kushner gives you an insight into the world of women - women who commit crimes - some unspeakable. Women who are incarcerated or on death row and yet the brutality of the system that these woman enter is awful. They don't stand a chance in life and American culture and "justice" receives a lambasting. I still felt pity for "Romy" and for others in that prison. The different narrators also provided insights and perspectives. My only small criticism is that the reader had a very flat and at times monotonous voice that possible did not suit all of the subjects. I would recommend this book - I for one always like to read about experiences I would never enter and the book always held my interest and I found it fascinating.

Pity or blame

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The first hour or two of this book is especially great, it’s both so real and unreal in the way life is, and the way memories are. I keep coming back to this book to listen to those first two hours again, and then I’m gripped to the story so that finishing it is inevitable - just as I was the first time around.

My praise for the first parts shouldn’t make you think the rest is not as good, the entire book is amazing, the first half just hits a particular nostalgic feeling in me personally

This is one of the best books I’ve ever read

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superb book written with restraint, candour and heart. The author's narration is wonderful, an honour to have her read her work.

excellent though imperfect.

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I really struggled to finish this. we knew what the outcome was so going into the details that much and back and forth made me start to lose interest

struggled to finish

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