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Hello.
Welcome to BBC World Book Club, where you get to talk about their work with the world's greatest writers.
I'm your host, Harriet Gilbert, and today we're joined from California by American author Rachel Kushner.
We'll be talking about her darkly funny, tender and fierce novel, The Mars Room.
It's the story of a young mother sentenced to life for killing a man who stalked her.
And, Rachel, although I think it's fair to say from that brief description
that this doesn't paint a very pretty picture of life in the USA,
but it has occurred to me that all the great American novels,
and I do think yours is a great novel, are much more interested in exploring the shadow side of the American dream.
I mean, I'm thinking of everything, you know, Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Scarlet Letter, Grapes of Wrath, Beloved.
Is that true, that that is what is really interesting to American authors?