Notes on The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner

The Mars Room is a novel written for a 2019 audience touching on -- or rather, body-slamming into -- contemporary political and social controversies, presenting them in a relevant way as not to start a dispute, but rather to start a conversation.

Kushner comments on mass incarceration, constitutional rights, corrupt cops/prison guards, racial stereotypes and prejudices, non-binary sexuality, gender roles/discrimination, gentrification and displacement, domestic violence, prostitution, war, motherhood, mental illness, and more, more, more.

I have no complaints and don’t want to spoil this novel for anyone.

Kushner is extremely bright, clever, and witty. If you have the opportunity, pick this book up off the shelf.

Here are a couple of my favorite quotes from The Mars Room, I hope you discover the rest yourself:

“A woman who looks cheap doesn’t have to be respected, and so she has a certain value, a cheap value.”

“What was it with law enforcement’s fear of shoulders?”

“Where people are gone, the night falls upward, black and unmanned.”