Only some of us get the luxury of repairing or moving on from a bad mistake. Imagine what could be achieved if these people were given an opportunity to make good decisions, to redress the bad. A place where people could be built up again, a place to counter, to lift, the desperate lives these prisoners have, largely, been born or pulled down into. Reading this novel, I couldn’t help but think that every character Kushner here describes would be better served in a place of care and restoration rather than in a prison. At its worst, at great expense to society it creates a world of recidivist criminals who are made to feel their options are hopeless. It’s not correctional, is purely disciplinary and ineffective.
This is an infinitely grimmer read than Kushners last book, but it also may be even better.
The only thing it does is offer some relief to those who prefer to think that it is a safer society if criminals are locked away, and/or it offers a sense of retribution for those who seek it. The Mars Room affirms Rachel Kushner as one of our best novelists: EW review. At university I studied criminology and my stance on the prison system hasn’t changed.
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