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Reviewed by Lit Amri for Readers' Favorite
Greenburg is a bankrupt northeastern town. The ones that have the means to move to a better place are long gone, leaving behind the ones that could not. Businesses struggle. To make do during the tough times, people turn to an experimental program: housing non-violent offenders in portable jail cells or Porto Units, in their basements. Basement is an off-center literary piece with a brush of mystery, thriller, and even hilarity by Mark Rogers.
Basement is not an easy read, yet unquestionably I had fun reading it. Mark Rogers created a very plausible world which I hope would stay as fiction. The characters are not easily likable but compelling. You have Smitty, who sputters racist terms in his day to day normal conversations. There is Mayor Bob, who is oddly perfect for Greenburg but definitely not for any other towns. Every prisoner builds some sort of relationship with their ‘owner,’ like the young prisoner Randall that has a sexual tryst with his owner’s wife Deena. The racist Smitty even warms up to his alcoholic prisoner Vernell, who is black, although that relationship would end up slightly bloody in the end.
On the whole, Basement is a stroke of satirical genius of human desperation and incongruity. Mark Rogers is a witty writer, and it is fun to ride along with him and his eclectic characters with varying degrees of bordering madness – as long as this type of tale is up your alley or you are at least open-minded enough to face the mordant, unethical, and dissolute doings in the town of Greenburg.
