The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 3 April 2023
by Rachel Kushner
This compelling novel opens as our protagonist, Romy Hall, boards a prison bus for a long sweaty ride north from Los Angeles, over the Grapevine, and into the San Joaquin Valley, arriving finally at a women's prison in the midst of miles of almond orchards to begin Romy's two life sentences. What ensues is a sometimes brutal, sometimes deeply compassionate novel of Romy's life and the transformations of living within the American carceral system. There are people within our culture for whom prison is not so much a punishment for an infraction, as a fact of life, a periodic payment for the ways in which they've learned to survive on the social and economic fringes of society. The vast prison industry is an indictment of America's hypocrisy. The oft-quoted fact that we imprison a higher proportion of our population than any other Western nation has become diluted by repetition. The fact that the poor, minorities and marginalized identities make up a much larger proportion of that imprisoned population is, again, an indicator of how deeply broken we are. Kushner isn't going to let us forget that. But at the same time, she isn't going to go on a political tirade about it, either. She is merely, and powerfully, just going to show us.
This reader is close to the age of this author. This reader also came of age in San Francisco's Sunset District, which Kushner describes in gritty detail as the origin story of her protagonist. Kushner definitely knows whereof she writes, and her portrayal of the Sunset in the late 70s and early 1980s is stark and convincing. Having grown up there, this reader found her view of the place a challenge to memory, but disturbingly accurate. We're used to seeing San Francisco painted with rosy nostalgic tints, but that's not what you come to this novel looking for.
So, Romy begins serving her sentences, discovering the unique social environment of a California women's prison. Kushner paints detailed and highly individual characters. Nobody in a prison is guilty of their crimes, but at the same time, there is a stratified atmosphere of the types of crimes committed. Nobody sinks lower than the baby-murderer or child-rapist. Romy makes it clear that there are injustices in her crimes, her capture, her conviction and her sentence. One of the worst results of her sentencing is losing her son, out there somewhere in the wide open world. She yearns to talk to him, but the structures of the System prevent her in a twisted tangle of Catch-22 illogic. Everyone inside is a victim, and everyone has to find their way to survive, just as they did in the outside world, and in the long run further integrating the culture of prison into their lives. It's a vicious, unjust, and deeply unequal system. It is clear that Kushner conducted extensive direct research on her subject. Otherwise, she wouldn't have been able to conjure the kind of vivid, varied and disturbingly detailed experience that we find in this book. Romy's journey is disturbing in its exposure of the injustices we choose to inflict on our citizens with the fewest resources or who are most marginalized politically and socially. There are surprises throughout the book, and the arc of its story unexpected and memorable. And just as a passing mention, there are strippers, corrupt cops, death-row inmates, teachers, mothers, daughters, trans folks, and others who all enliven Kushner's narrative. Recommended.
(As for San Francisco's Sunset District forty years later: It's largely gentrified. Few, if any, of the little houses out there goes for less than a million dollars now. But early in 2023, one of those houses exploded and burned to the ground when a basement drug lab caught fire. So, yeah, feels like home.)