The Mars Room

　　羅咪（Romy Hall）年輕時，曾在舊金山的脫衣舞酒吧 Mars Room 工作，如今正在女監中服役，她七歲大的兒子則和奶奶一起生活。獄中的生活，得面對上千名女性在有限的物資你爭我奪，勉力保留基本的生活品質。作者瑞秋（Rachel Kushner）用幽默的口吻，帶過這怵目驚心的對立與爭奪，除了日常警衛的暴行，還有黑市交易的內幕與運作過程，透過聯外的汙水管道，掩藏數不盡的金流操作。誰才是這地下社會的王者？

　　羅咪漸漸地習慣牢獄裡的生活與運作方式，或許這就是她的新世界。但外界卻傳來消息，重重地改變她的命運，是否會放棄建立起來的獄中王國？

　　這是一部發人省思的小說，探討女子監獄裡的生態樣貌，控訴當權機構漠視正義、製造嫁禍與階級等諸多社會問題。每一個女囚背後的故事，交織成一部巨細靡遺的眾生相；另一方面，本是正義機構的女子收容所，卻變相成為犯罪的溫床，囚犯間彼此交換訊息，互通有無。

　　逃與不逃，都是個問題。嘆為觀止與感人的情節，觸動讀者心中最柔軟的心田。（文 / 博客來編譯）

　　Romy Hall is at the start of two consecutive life sentences, plus six years, at Stanville Women’s Correctional Facility. Outside is the world from which she has been permanently severed: the San Francisco of her youth, changed almost beyond recognition. The Mars Room strip club where she once gave lap dances for a living. And her seven-year-old son, Jackson, now in the care of Romy’s estranged mother.

　　Inside is a new reality to adapt to: thousands of women hustling for the bare essentials needed to survive. The deadpan absurdities of institutional living, which Kushner details with humour and precision. Daily acts of violence by guards and prisoners alike. Allegiances formed over liquor brewed in socks, and stories shared through sewage pipes.

　　Romy sees the future stretch out ahead of her in a long, unwavering line – until news from outside brings a ferocious urgency to her existence, challenging her to escape her own destiny and culminating in a climax of almost unbearable intensity. Through Romy – and through a cast of astonishing characters populating The Mars Room – Rachel Kushner presents not just a bold and unsentimental panorama of life on the margins of contemporary America, but an excoriating attack on the prison-industrial complex.