This book was a struggle to get through from the beginning until the very end… It took me almost an entire month to finish reading it because I simply was never motivated to pick it up. To me, it had the worst of all worlds combined. I wasn’t interested or involved in the plot, I couldn’t care less about what happened next and I didn’t manage to connect with any of the characters. It was extremely difficult to keep up my attention span, so that I could hardly ever read in big chunks without starting to feel bored. There were some parts that popped up from time to time for which I didn’t understand at all what the intention behind them was or from which character’s perspective they were written. The general amount of characters and their different nicknames left me in a constantly confused state, so that I was always asking myself who was who.

All of this was topped off with the experience of reading sexist, misogynistic and condescending narratives about cisgender and transgender women.

The transsexuals on his unit played powder puff softball and Doc liked watching the games just as much as the next red-blooded male. […] Suddenly, you’ve got these creatures with big asses and actual, real boobies bouncing around their knit cotton state-issue jerseys […]. They were fun and stupid and uncoordinated and smelled good, just like women, and like women, they had pea-brains and spoke in soft, squeaky voices.

p. 131-132

A hairy snatch, wet, relaxed-looking. He parts the lips with his fingers, uses the other hand to ready himself. […] He can’t see a face but he doesn’t need or want one.

p. 199

To me, “The Mars Room” was one of those exceptions where it didn’t end up being worth having pushed myself through the 340 pages. If you feel similar, having started reading it and not seeming to be able to connect with the story, just spare yourself the time. The only moment when I felt a positive surprise, being able to get into a reading flow, was on the last 6 pages where the style changed completely… I really don’t understand the hype around this book and I also think that this will probably stay the first and the last book I read by Rachel Kushner. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration if I were to say that this was one of the worst books I have read in the last 2-3 years… If you’re looking for a better book that would elaborate on the experiences of prisoners in jail, I would rather recommend you Chris Atkins’ “A Bit of a Stretch“!

★☆☆☆☆ (1/5)

_{Edition: ISBN 978-0-09958-996-9
Vintage, 2019 (first published in 2018)}