The Mars Room cover art

The Mars Room

A Novel

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The Mars Room

Written by: Rachel Kushner
Narrated by: Rachel Kushner
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TIME’S #1 FICTION TITLE OF THE YEAR • NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018

FINALIST for the MAN BOOKER PRIZE and the NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD

LONGLISTED for the ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL

An instant New York Times bestseller from two-time National Book Award finalist Rachel Kushner, The Mars Room earned tweets from Margaret Atwood—“gritty, empathic, finely rendered, no sugar toppings, and a lot of punches, none of them pulled”—and from Stephen King—“The Mars Room is the real deal, jarring, horrible, compassionate, funny.”

It’s 2003 and Romy Hall, named after a German actress, is at the start of two consecutive life sentences at Stanville Women’s Correctional Facility, deep in California’s Central Valley. Outside is the world from which she has been severed: her young son, Jackson, and the San Francisco of her youth. Inside is a new reality: thousands of women hustling for the bare essentials needed to survive; the bluffing and pageantry and casual acts of violence by guards and prisoners alike; and the deadpan absurdities of institutional living, portrayed with great humor and precision.

Stunning and unsentimental, The Mars Room is “wholly authentic…profound…luminous” (The Wall Street Journal), “one of those books that enrage you even as they break your heart” (The New York Times Book Review, cover review)—a spectacularly compelling, heart-stopping novel about a life gone off the rails in contemporary America. It is audacious and tragic, propulsive and yet beautifully refined and “affirms Rachel Kushner as one of our best novelists” (Entertainment Weekly). Crime Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Fiction Crime Thriller Witty Heartfelt New York Suspense
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I did like this book a lot and think the author did a great job of narrating. Because this was an audio book with 1 narrator it would have been helpful to know who was "speaking" at times. Especially the extracts from the diaries of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. I actually had to look it up because I thought it might have been Gordon or I was missing a character. I will try other books by Rachel Kushner.

Enjoyed it a lot!!

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What a trip into the banal yet tragic world of these characters. What I liked: it feels real and honest, with no sensationalism or sentimentality. Rachel Kushner is a truly gifted writer.

Wow

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I could not get into it and I thought it would come together in the end but no luck.

Going nowhere

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