Review
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“Like Denis Johnson in ‘Jesus’ Son,’ Kushner is on the
lookout for bent moments of comic grace…The Mars Room is a major
novel.”
—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
“Kushner uses the novel as a place to be flamboyant and funny,
and to tell propulsive stories, but mainly as a capacious arena
for thinking.”
—The New Yorker
“[Rachel Kushner is] one of the most gifted novelists of her
generation—on the same tier as Jennifer Egan and the two
Jonathans, Franzen and Lethem…[The Mars Room is] a page
turner… blackly comic…It’s one of those books that enrage you
even as they break your heart.”
—Charles McGrath, The New York Times Book Review (Cover Review)
“The Mars Room affirms Rachel Kushner as one of our best
novelists…her stories slink in the margins, but they have the
feel of something iconic.”
—Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly
“Kushner is a woman with the chops, ambition and killer instinct
to rub shoulders with all those big, swinging male egos who
routinely get worshipped as geniuses.”
—John Powers, Fresh Air
“[A] tough, prismatic and quite gripping novel…wholly
authentic…profound…surprisingly luminous.”
—Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
"A disturbing and atmospheric book...Ms Kushner makes the
prison, and the world beyond its walls, vivid."
—The Economist
"A searing, tragic look at life in the prison-industrial
complex, covering poverty, sex work, mass incarceration,
education, trauma, suffering, love, and redemption. Somehow,
Kushner's rapid-fire, imaginative prose makes it seems
effortless.”
—Vogue
“Potent…an incendiary examination of flawed justice and the
stacked deck of a system that entraps women who were born into
poverty…The Mars Room is more than a novel; it’s an
investigation, an exercise in empathy, an eyes-wide-open work of
art.”
—Kelly Luce, Oprah
“[An] electrifying take on the chaos of 1980s San Francisco.”
—Sloane Crosley, Vanity Fair
“Phosphorescently vivid.”
—Megan O’Grady, T Magazine
“Superb and gritty… Kushner has an exceptional ability to be in
the heads of her character."
—Eve MacSweeney, Vogue
"A powerful undertow pulls the reader through the book. I didn’t
consume it so much as it consumed me, bite by bite..."
—Laura Miller, Slate
"Kushner's characters are so authentic and vividly drawn that
with each new novel, it’s easy to assume she’s tapped out. Yet
in The Mars Room, she brings to life another remarkable heroine."
—Time Magazine
“Kushner is a masterful world-creator, and her accomplishment
here is unparalleled.”
—Nylon
“Kushner’s writing and thinking are always invigorating, urgent,
and painterly precise.”
—Vulture
“Stunning… a gorgeously written depiction of survival and the
absurd and violent facets of life in prison.”
—Buzzfeed
“Gorgeous…The Mars Room sings.”
—Sasha Frere-Jones, Bookforum
“A revelatory novel about women on the margins of society…it’s a
true feat of Kushner’s extraordinary writing that such profound
ugliness can result in such tumultuous beauty.”
—Maris Kreizman, Vulture
“Stunning…Heartbreaking and wholly original.”
—Bustle
“A probing portrait of contemporary America.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Unflinching.”
—Elle
“Kushner’s great gift is for the evocation of a scene, a time
and place.”
—Harper’s
“Reading The Mars Room is a profoundly affecting experience,
very nearly overwhelming, and yet it absolutely must be
read. Kushner’s first two novels (Telex from Cuba, The
Flamethrowers) were National Book Award finalists. It would be
baffling if The Mars Room does not win this year’s.”
—Cory Oldweiler, amNewYork
“[A] stunning new book… Kushner deploys the masterful
storytelling she’s known for…an unmistakable voice. “
—Town and Country
“Brilliant and devastating…Kushner doesn't make a false move in
her third novel; she writes with an intelligence and a ferocity
that sets her apart from most others in her cohort. She's a
remarkably original and compassionate author, and The Mars
Room is a heartbreaking, true and nearly flawless novel.”
—Michael Schaub, NPR.org
“An essential novel...Kushner is a bit of a magician, exploring
bleak territory with pathos and urgency that makes it nearly
impossible to stop reading.”
—AM New York
“Kushner is both tough and darkly funny in writing about her
characters’ situations, and she writes not so much for us to
empathize with them, but rather to understand them. The Mars
Room is a captivating and beautiful novel.”
—BookPage
“Kushner's writing is clipped and sharp, as she tells the story
of [Romy's] adjustment to life behind bars — and how she got
there.”
—The Week
“An enormously ambitious project profoundly rooted in a
particular time and place… Kushner’s greatest achievement in this
unique work of brilliance and rigor is to urge us all to take
responsibility for the unconscionable state of the world in which
we operate blithely every single day.”
—Jennifer Croft, The Los Angeles Review of Books
“Rachel Kushner cements her place as the most vital and
interesting American novelist working today...The Mars Room makes
most other contemporary fiction seem timid and predictable."
—Michael Lindgren, The Millions
“Absorbing…The Mars Room is impeccably researched without ever
seeming dry or preachy… inful…authoritative…haunting.”
—Alexis Burling, San Francisco Chronicle
"Kushner’s got the talent to justify the hype…The Mars
Room builds to a redemption that comes from hard truth, sharp and
broken and shaped by an author of exceptional power and grace.”
—Jeff Baker, The Seattle Times
“The book is beautifully written, without sentimentality or
agenda, and at times even [with] a sly and dark humor.”
—Holly Silva, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Readers will savor every detail of Ms. Kushner’s descriptive
passages, which bring ferocious beauty to even the ugliest
surroundings."
—Leigh Anne Focareta, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette
“[Kushner is] an exceptionally talented and philosophically
minded writer.”
—Jessica Zack, The San Francisco Chronicle
“Heartbreaking and unforgettable… [The Mars Room] deserves to be
read with the same level of pathos, love, and humanity with which
it clearly was written.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“Kushner, an accled writer of exhilarating skills, has
created a seductive narrator of tigerish intensity… This is a
gorgeously eviscerating novel of incarceration writ large."
—Booklist, Starred Review
“A searing look at life on the margins…This is, fundamentally, a
novel about poverty and how our structures of power do not work
for the poor, and Kushner does not flinch…gripping."
—Kirkus Reviews
“Kushner is back with another stunner…without a shred of
sentimentality, Kushner makes us see these characters as humans
who are survivors, getting through life the only way they are
able given their circumstances.”
—Library Journal
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About the Author
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Rachel Kushner is the bestselling author of The
Flamethrowers, a finalist for the National Book Award and a New
York Times Top Ten Book of 2013; Telex from Cuba, a finalist for
the National Book Award; and The Mars Room. She lives in Los
Angeles.
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