A Powerful Look at Women in Prison
Rachel Kushner’s firestorm of a third novel, “The Mars Room,” opens as 60 female prisoners are transported by bus, in the dead of night, to a different correctional facility. One woman silently dies there on the bus, slumped forward in her chains. Like a modern Ishmael, narrator Romy Leslie Hall — inmate W314159 — describes routine realities:
“There was a girl on my unit in county who got life for nothing but driving. She wasn’t the shooter. … All she did was drive the car.” With its detailed
