Room: A Novel

Emma Donoghue
Little, Brown and Company (2010)
ISBN 9780316098335
Reviewed by April Sullivan for Reader Views (11/10)

 

“Room” is a book I never could have dreamed someone would write or that I would read. It is the story of a woman held captive in an 11 foot by 11 foot room told through the eyes and voice of her five-year-old son who has only known life in Room. Author Emma Donoghue goes to great lengths to painstakingly describe this tight living space as well as the limited view of the world that Jack and Ma experience on a daily basis. She has a talent in letting the reader in on the details of the situation only as needed and in a thought pattern that accurately reflects the way a five year old would see it.

Jack is a perfectly written five-year-old boy. I am not a mother, but I am the aunt of a five-year-old boy and I could imagine my nephew in this character. From the way he talks, using Dora the Explorer as his role model, to the way he processes information, with no doubt that his mother knows all, and the way he is resilient to the life he must endure, but doesn’t even realize is out of the ordinary.

Emma Donoghue is brilliant in her drawing in of the audience as an external character. As I read this book, I found I could not put it down. I felt like the faster I read it, the shorter amount of time Jack and Ma would have to spend in Room. Was I the only one who knew they were there? If I read the words off the page, would it save them from this horrific existence?

But the funny thing is, this book is not horrific. It is a beautiful study of a mother/son relationship. It is a reminder that life is what you make it, no matter what the circumstances. It is a text on the psychology of humans as social beings.

Being written from the perspective of such a young child, “Room” is written simply. But it is also very complex because it is being filtered through the brain of an adult reader who can take each sentence, each paragraph, each chapter, and think beyond what is happening to what could happen or will happen. Emma Donoghue has created something unique here. “Room” is a book I will not easily forget.

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