The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner was given to me by my boss. I appealed to her good taste for help in finding my next Cannonball Read selection, as I knew she’d point me to something deep and meaningful. I was not wrong. The Mars Room read like a collection of thoughtful anecdotes from a life filled with tragedy. The novel commences with the musings, recollections, and observations of our main character as she barrels along in prison transport to serve a life sentence in […]

I gave this novel a shot, but I ended up liking it less and less as I went on. At first, it reminded me a lot of Mary Gaitskill, and you could do worse than sounding like a Mary Gaitskill (luckily we can just go read Mary Gaitskill novels). But then I couldn’t help feel like the novel was trying to tell me how smart it was and how much it knew. But the thing is, it doesn’t know that much. This is basically a […]