Room by Emma Donoghue
From the Book: To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.
Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough...not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.
Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, ROOM is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.
My Review: When I began reading Room I was a little perplexed by the language. Maybe because I don't have children, but reading things from the perspective of a 5-year-old that's lived every breathe within the confines of a backyard shed was difficult. It didn't take me long though to learn Jack's way of communicating and pick up on his language. After I adjusted to understanding what Jack was saying, I was enthralled by the abilities of Donoghue to write a novel this way. Wow! Brilliant, really.
There are so many lessons to be learned from the life of Jack and his mother. Mainly, the value we displace on the small joys in life. The power of reading and stories, obvi! The bond between mother and child. The difficulties of expaining so much about our entire world without being in it. Remarkable.
I wished that Jack's experiences with life outside of Room were less puncuated. While inside Room I was awed at his imagination and lust for life. Outside of Room Jack lost this. I don't feel like the end of the book was the best depiction of what it would be like to see the world for the first time as a kid. It may well be attributed to lack of accessible research. I realize that there aren't too many documented cases of this type of scenario. Also, it's highly likely that the lives of any real-life Jack's after release may not be highly publicized. I can only imagine how the desire to forget and move on would result in a lack of research on the matter for authors.
Recommendation: This was a great book. For a year I had this book sitting on my fiction shelf. I had no idea until recently that it was non-fiction. This is a book club book from the past that I was catching up on. After the recent release of the adbudcted girls in Cleveland, OH I moved it to the top of my catch-up list. I'm glad that I did. I heard there may be a movie released based on this novel. I hope it does Jack some justice. I also hope that it reveals the bond between mother and son and the perils of raising a son and teaching him what he needs to know from the inside of a Room. Definitely, read this book. It's wonderfully written about a subject that isn't that easily researched.
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