The Mars Room Book Review

Reviewed by norah piehl on may 4 2018.

The mars room book review. The mars room is the worst and most notorious the very seediest and most circuslike place there is the book s central narrator romy works there giving lap dances. The versatile and accomplished mcbride five carat soul 2017 etc returns with a dark urban farce crowded with misjudged signals crippling sorrows and unexpected epiphanies it s september 1969 just after apollo 11 and woodstock. In a season of such events it s just as improbable that in front of 16 witnesses occupying the crowded plaza of a brooklyn housing project one afternoon a. Hauntingly illustrated and spiced with artsy pull quotes it was an extraordinary presentation designed to proclaim the advent of an extraordinary book.

They say books take a person away from the world they think is reality. She has a sense of. Perhaps fittingly given its pacing and tone the mars room is a deeply empathic profoundly heartbreaking book that encourages readers to stop and ponder these questions and many more. The result is a fugue of a book whose various voices swell and fade complementing and complicating kushner s.

For kushner everything is admissible not just romy s state of mind but also her victim s and even the internal chatter of the girl whose tattoo instructed romy to pipe down. A reader can step into the mars room without the slightest suspension of disbelief still compelled to turn the next page. The mars room audiobook written and read by rachel kushner from twice national book award nominated rachel kushner whose flamethrowers was called the best most brazen most interesting book of the year kathryn schulz new york magazine comes a spectacularly compelling heart stopping novel about a life gone off the rails in. The mars room depicts that sordid history in full.

In the mars room rachel kushner provides excerpts from ted kaczynski s journals to draw parallels between the unabomber and her character gordon hauser the man that teaches an english class at stanville prison ted kaczynski was a reclusive u s. Domestic terrorist responsible for mailing or planting 16 bombs from 1978 1995 killing three people and injuring 23. The mars room is more real than most real conversations ya hear at a coffee house. Indeed a times book critic followed up with a review calling the mars room a major novel.