Author: Rachel Kushner
Rachel Kushner’s third novel, The Mars Room, begins with its central character, 29-year-old Romy Hall, a lap dancer who has just begun serving two consecutive life sentences plus six years for murdering a stalker. Outside is the world from which she has been severed, the San Francisco of her youth and her young son, Jackson. Inside is a new reality like 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 which Kushner evokes with great humor and precision.
> Shatabdi Sarker Poushi
