A Mother's Love

'Room'
By: Emma Donoghue


Format: ARC
Published: Little, Brown and Company; Sept. 2010
Pages: 336


Synopsis: Five-year-old Jack has never known anything of life beyond Room, the 11-square-foot space he shares with his mother. Jack has learned to read, count, and process an imaginary world Outside through television. At night he sleeps in a wardrobe in case Old Nick comes to visit, bringing supplies and frightening intrusion. Worried about his curiosity and her own desperation, his mother reveals to Jack that the Outside is real and that they must escape. She tells him that she was kidnapped by Old Nick and has been held secluded in Room for seven years. Jack is brave enough to carry out their plan, and the two of them are compelled to adjust to life Outside, with its bright lights and noise and people touching. What is reconnection for his mother is discovery for Jack, who is soon overwhelmed by the changes in his mother and a world coming at him fast and furiously. Room is beautifully written as a first-person narrative from Jack’s perspective, and within it, Donoghue has constructed a quiet, private, and menacing world that slowly unbends with a mother and son’s love and determination. 


My Take: I like to read all of the books that are long listed for the Man Booker Prize. This one was short listed this year and it was getting great reviews around the blogging community. However the story line did make me hesitate a bit. I get easily freaked out. If you've been reading this blog for any length of time then you'll know I don't read any horror or scary books of any kind and the plot of this book ventured on the real life a little too closely. Because, if you've been following the news at all, there have been a couple of cases, one in Northern California really close to where I live, very similar to the plot of this book. While these cases fascinate me like no other and I want to pick them apart to try to understand the psyche of who would do something like this, reading a book is a little bit different for me. But let me tell you, from someone who is easily scared, this is totally worth it, and while it will get under your skin, it is not in a horrifying way. It gets under your skin in the power of family kind of way. This is one of those books that is so good and moving that you want everyone around you to read it because YOU JUST HAVE TO TALK ABOUT IT WITH SOMEONE ELSE!! You know those kind? Yep, you do!


So, what is it all about anyway? Well there is Ma. We never learn her real name because the story is told from the point of view of Jack. Jack is a fabulous narrator. He is Ma's son and he is an incredibly smart 5 years old. Something horrible has happened to the two of them. They've been locked up in Old Nick's shed for Jack's entire life and the last 7 years of Ma's. The psyche of their world in this room, or as Jack calls it Room, is fascinating. It is all Jack knows. He is not scared by it or freaked out by it so much but Ma is at her breaking point and wants to devise a plan to get out. This because Ma is his safe place. Seriously, how amazing is that?


I'll admit, at first I wasn't totally sold on the book because the first couple of sections when it was just the two of them, with an occasional creepy visit from Old Nick in Room, I was bored. Not to be blase about the whole thing but (spoiler alert!) I didn't know if they were going to get to break free or not and I was thinking if this whole book is going to be set in Room and this is it, the whole book, I don't know if I can make it because there is only so much plot that can happen in an 11x11 room, no matter how creative Ma is but alas that is not the whole story.

Here's what fascinated me the most I think, how incredibly well researched the book seemed to be. Once they were out and Ma and Jack had to acclimate themselves to, as Jack called it, Outside, there was way more thrown at them and new experiences to assimilate to then I could have ever imagined they would have had to adjust to. Of course they were targets of the paparazzi but I didn't even think that his hair would have never been cut because they wouldn't have been allowed sharp objects so the media thought he was some sort of feral child and that their skin and eyes were super sensitive to the sunlight because they were locked away for so long. The whole thing was absolutely fascinating.

And Jack. What can I say. He was just the sweetest little boy ever. You wanted to give him a hug if you could have. I think a lot of people shy away from books narrated by children but don't. This added a real dimension to the story. His perspective on time was totally flawed so you had to get used to that but, the rest, the rest was just fabulous.

So, if you have read it, what did you think? And if you haven't, please do!

(Thank you to Crazy Book Tours for sending me a copy of this book)