My Amazon and Goodreads review of The Mars Room (Rating 5) – No One is a Zero. Rachel Kushner’s novel The Mars Room, set in a bleak women’s prison, is unexpectedly life-affirming. The story of Romy Hall, serving a life sentence without parole, focuses less on external prison conditions, although Kushner paints a nitty-gritty portrait, than on the family created by the inmates. Inevitable animosities arise, but so does genuine affection between inmates in a sterile environment that nevertheless teems with hope. Sharing Romy’s regret that she didn’t appreciate small pleasures while she had the chance, readers vow not to take their own daily existence for granted. We thrill to Romy’s brief brush with freedom and inhale the awareness that neither she, nor we, are zero.
