THE MARS ROOM by RACHEL KUSHNER (2018)

One of the proven benefits of reading novels is that you get to experience different worlds, to better understand different times, different places, and people unlike yourself. So far, in my binge reading of 2018 novels, I have learned what it's like to be young, beautiful, rich, and depressed (My Year of Rest and Relaxation); what its like to be an eighteen-year-old girl with a stalker in strife-torn Ireland in the 1970s (Milkman); what it's like to be an urban Native American in the 21st Century (There There); and what it's like to be a gay man in 1985 when having AIDS meant a death sentence (The Great Believers). The Mars Room allowed me to learn what it's like to have a tumble-down upbringing and end up in a woman's prison. What a wealth of experiences for me, an old lady in a recliner, often in pajamas!

Romy, the narrator of most of the novel, begins her account as she is transported to Stanville Women's Correctional Facility. As the novel progresses she chronicles prison life, profiles her fellow inmates, and thinks of the past that led her to two life sentences. Beginning life with an absent father and an addicted mother, she lived a childhood of poverty and life on the streets -- raped at age eleven, drifting into the sex trade, becoming a lap dancer at The Mars Room, and surviving despite the odds. The crime of which she has been convicted is only gradually revealed and seems to be almost inevitable.

The day-to-day life in the prison proves to be the most engrossing aspect of the novel: the casual brutality, the tricks and dodges of getting by, the loneliness in the midst of thousands, the almost-laughable absurdities of the rules and regulations. According to the author, this aspect was heavily researched, and it does ring true and is fascinating even in its grimness.

Kushner inserts something of a jarring note, however, with two third-person stories. One concerns Doc, a crooked cop who is incarcerated in a men's prison. The other concerns Hauser, a civilian teacher hired to help inmates pass the GED. Both stories seem just tacked on to flesh out the book, particularly Hauser's story, which is abruptly dropped when he leaves prison employment for reasons untold. This novel has many pluses, but these intrusions are minuses, in my opinion, as is the book's ending, which is a bit too ambiguous for my tastes.

This is a much praised novel, which was a finalist for both the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It is definitely a contender for the Pulitzer. I recommend it with reservations.