Room: A Novel

I'd like to give this book two and a half stars; I wanted to like it so bad because the plot was pretty good and the writing style held my attention. But the characters were just so so so unlikable to me! I'm sure that's part of the point, that they've been through stuff and they're imperfect, but I think the author took it too far. It seemed like every other interaction was angry or creepy or morally questionable. The mother is especially inconsistent (claiming her son's birth saved her and mourning over her dead infant one second, then immediately claiming she didn't regret having an abortion a year prior??) and I struggled to find any purpose or meaning in this book. My final complaint is that the child's narration was rather gimmicky and inauthentic, especially at the beginning.

Everyone is more than welcome to disagree, but for me the book just left a bad taste in my mouth and left me wondering what was gained from reading it. It's too bad though because again, the basic plot was unique and captivating. Maybe there will be a revised version someday? Haha.

It's ambitious. It has a unique and consistent perspective through a very young child. It deals not only with the harrowing captivity of a mother and her son, but of their escape and rehabilitation (something that many captivity narratives tend to gloss over).

But does it hold up?

While Jack's voice is at first as endearing as it is haunting, it can get frustrating. It seems almost too optimistic at times, and there are often times where his compassion and sensitivity crosses over into unbelievable territory. Five year old kids don't have that much empathy for people around them (literal sociopaths!) and Jack's constant cheeriness sometimes sucked me out of any suspension of disbelief. That's nothing considering the novel's depiction of the media. The interview between Ma and Not-Oprah and the news is just so painfully cynical.

While I think "Room" would have made a much stronger shorter novel (perhaps even as a short story), I never got bored of it. It read quickly and it has a constant tension that really takes the reader and demands the whole thing to be read in a couple sittings. Despite some personal problems that I have with it, I totally recommend giving it a go.

Room review
I had qualms about reading [b:Room|31685789|Room|Emma Donoghue|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1472239721l/31685789.SX50.jpg|9585076] The topic sounded unpleasant and harrowing. I feared that it would be the book equivalent of the 1997 Michael Haneke movie “Funny Games,” about the only movie I’ve ever regretted watching for reasons other than poor quality. The publishers seem to sense such possible reluctance: There’re nine pages of excerpts from positive reviews in my 2011 Back Bay Books paperback edition.
The film version of the novel, which I haven’t seen yet, was well received (it’s been nominated for Best Picture) and [a:Emma Donoghue|23613|Emma Donoghue|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1591714728p2/23613.jpg]’s prose got many good things written about it—which I’d read elsewhere—so I read it anyway. I’m glad I did.
Yes, you do feel imprisoned in the room along with the characters Jack, the five-year-old narrator, and Ma, his mother, whose real name you never learn, and feeling that way is disturbing. But Donoghue has succeeded in making Jack’s voice so convincing and consistent (garnering her a comparison to James Joyce) that I was hooked and read it for long stretches at a time. I read its 321 pages in two days flat, and I am not the kind of reader who does that, ever.
The ending is a satisfying one without being easy and treacly or using action movie devices to get there. It goes deep enough that you come to a point where you realize why the title lacks the definite article.

This compelling story is told from a five year old boy's point of view. Jack lives in Room, where he was born and has lived his entire life with Ma. During these five years, Room is Jack's world, he knows nothing about Outside. To Jack, Room is where he is safe.

To Ma, Room is the prison she has endured for seven years, after being kidnapped, raped, and locked away in Old Nick's backyard shed. They are given the necessities--food, clothing, heat, and they do have a TV and running water. In this tiny space, Ma does her very best with Jack, keeping him occupied, teaching him to read, allowing him small amounts of Television, such as Dora the Explorer. But soon, none of this will be enough. Ma knows Old Nick will not keep them alive forever--and he certainly is not going to let them out. Breaking out is not an option, either; Old Nick's security system and his shed's camouflage make discovery and rescue by an outside party impossible.

Ma has a plan, and now that Jack is old enough, the two of them make it happen. But this is only half the story. When they do make it Outside, they are confronted with a storm of media attention, legal issues, therapy, and a family that has undergone changes since Ma was kidnapped off a college campus at the age of nineteen. Both Jack and Ma have problems that could not have been predicted.

We never learn Ma's name, because this is Jack's story, and with his extraordinarily well-developed language skills, he's very adept at processing everything the grownups say around him and very good at asking the right questions. And he seems wise beyond his years in that he knows exactly what his needs are. The last scene in the book is an event that Jack has requested, and it effects the perfect closure for him, and probably helps Ma, as well. Jack really is her superhero.

An abundance of interesting issues are presented in this story, and this novel would probably make for an interesting discussion.

Given that I have an entire shelf for adult literature with child protaganists, the concept of a child narrator was not the novel part of this book for me. But what really stood out was that Donoghue made Jack a very normal five year old. He was in no way a prodigy or wise beyond his years. Instead, we were given access to the routine-oriented rigidity of a five year old. The description of Jack's life inside of Room was interesting - with his routines and his properly named personified objects and his perceptions of events that were much darker than he could understand. However, what made the book was his perception of the world following his rescue and his adjustment to the world outside.

My only objection was the occasional detour into preachy land - Jack notes how tired adults are in the outside world and how they don't have enough time to spend with their kids and I wonder what the author's trying to imply? That women would be happier if they were locked in a room with nothing to do other than play with their kids? I don't think that's her point, but it comes uncomfortably close to reading that way.