Room

Room

By Emma Donoghue
Published: Little, Brown and Company, 2010
Pages: 321
Genre: Contemporary
Amazon, Goodreads

She nods. "And the places are real too, like farms and forests and airplanes and cities..."
"Nah." Why is she tricking me? "Where would they fit?"
"Out there," says Ma. "Outside." She jerks her head back.
"Outside Bed Wall?" I stare at it.
"Outside Room."

Room is genius. I only picked it up because it's been on my tbr list forever and there's a Netflix movie of it now. Boy, I'm so glad I did!

Told from the perspective of five-year-old Jack, Room is about a young woman who gets kidnapped and held against her will in a small shed. She's there for nine long years and ends up having a child by her kidnapper. Jack and Ma live by their routine when things start changing for them and Ma soon realizes that they must escape if they want to live. Will they make it out alive? If so, how will Jack adjust after living in such a small space without socialization for all his life?

What really makes Room memorable is that it's told from a child's perspective. It took several pages for me to adjust to the narrator's way of speaking but then I got hooked. The novel is separated into five sections: presents, unlying, dying, after and living. This helps break up the story and mark the changes in Jack's life. The novel being written from Jack's point of view focuses the story on Jack's development; I feel like if it was written from the mother's perspective then there'd need to be more about Ma's background and Old Nick's arrest. Jack's voice simplifies Room so readers can easily be drawn in.

The characters are so real. Jack's struggle with Outside feels so real to me, like that is probably how a child would actually behave in his situation. All of the struggles - Jack having to understand why Room is bad, Ma trying - and at times failing - to get back into the real world, and other characters attempting to understand and connect with Jack.

The Room is a great piece of work that I'd recommend to anyone.

RATING (out of five puppies)