Room (London: Picador; Toronto: HarperCollins Canada; New York: Little Brown, 2010), Emma Donoghue's Man-Booker-shortlisted seventh novel, is the story of a five-year-old called Jack, who lives in a single room with his Ma and has never been outside. When he turns five, he starts to ask questions, and his mother reveals to him that there is a world beyond the walls. Told entirely in Jack’s voice, Room is no horror story or tearjerker, but a celebration of resilience and the love between parent and child.
An international bestseller as soon as it was published in August 2010, Room has now sold well over two million copies. It won the Hughes & Hughes Irish Novel of the Year, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize (for best Canadian novel), the Commonwealth Prize (Canada & Carribbean Region), the Canadian Booksellers’ Association Libris Awards (Fiction Book and Author of the Year), the Forest of …
Room (London: Picador; Toronto: HarperCollins Canada; New York: Little Brown, 2010), Emma Donoghue's Man-Booker-shortlisted seventh novel, is the story of a five-year-old called Jack, who lives in a single room with his Ma and has never been outside. When he turns five, he starts to ask questions, and his mother reveals to him that there is a world beyond the walls. Told entirely in Jack’s voice, Room is no horror story or tearjerker, but a celebration of resilience and the love between parent and child.
An international bestseller as soon as it was published in August 2010, Room has now sold well over two million copies. It won the Hughes & Hughes Irish Novel of the Year, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize (for best Canadian novel), the Commonwealth Prize (Canada & Carribbean Region), the Canadian Booksellers’ Association Libris Awards (Fiction Book and Author of the Year), the Forest of Reading Evergreen Award, the W. H. Smith Paperback of the Year Award and the University of Canberra Book of the Year. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Orange Prize, the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award, International Author of the Year (Galaxy National Book Awards), the Governor General’s Award and the Trillium English Book Award. The American Library Association gave it an Alex Award (for an adult book with special appeal to readers 12-18) and the Indie Choice Award for Adult Fiction. The Canadian Library Association named it as an Honour Book in their Canadian Young Adult Book Award. The four-voiced audiobook version won one of three Publishers Weekly Listen Up Awards and an Earphones Award.
The New York Times named it as one of their six best fiction titles of 2010 and the Washington Post included it in their Editors’ Top Ten. Room was also winner of a Salon Book Award for Fiction, an NPR Best Book of 2010, a New Yorker Reviewers’ Favorite, Bloomberg’s 2010 Top Novel, The Week Magazine’s Top Book 2010, and featured on many ‘best of the year’ lists including those of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Christian Science Monitor. Room was Amazon.ca and Indigo’s Best Book (as well as a Heather’s Pick) of 2010, fiction winner of the Goodreads Choice Awards, Top Pick of the Channel 4 TV Book Club, and also chosen by the Richard & Judy Book Club. Room was chosen as one of twenty-five titles to be given away by tens of thousands on World Book Night UK 2012.
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I surprised myself by the end of this book by how much I loved it. It disturbed me so much at the beginning that I actually set it down for a couple of months before finishing it. The idea of being kidnapped, raped repeatedly, and trapped in a tiny room with no windows for seven years frightened me more than horror films do. And even when ma and Jack escape, there's no guarantee that anything will be better. And really, talk about your unreliable narrator! Unique and terrifying.
I forgot to mention that my 5 star rating has more to do with the way this was written and the creative idea behind the story rather than how I actually responded to the story. It really freaked me out.
Jack is rather smart for his age, he has a curious mind and always wants to know the answers to everything; but Jack doesn’t know much about what is in the world, since he was born in captivity. Room tells the story of a 5 year old and his mother who was kidnapped 7 years ago and locked in a room 11x11feet. Emma Donoghue got the idea for this book after reading about five-year-old Felix in the Fritzl case and this is an attempt to understand what the child’s views of the world. There is a lot of interesting aspects in this book, including the fact they call their captor Old Nick; which in old Christianity was a name used when referring to the devil.
While I was expecting this book to be dark and disturbing, this is really accessible to all readers (granted I would prefer darker) and doesn’t …
Jack is rather smart for his age, he has a curious mind and always wants to know the answers to everything; but Jack doesn’t know much about what is in the world, since he was born in captivity. Room tells the story of a 5 year old and his mother who was kidnapped 7 years ago and locked in a room 11x11feet. Emma Donoghue got the idea for this book after reading about five-year-old Felix in the Fritzl case and this is an attempt to understand what the child’s views of the world. There is a lot of interesting aspects in this book, including the fact they call their captor Old Nick; which in old Christianity was a name used when referring to the devil.
While I was expecting this book to be dark and disturbing, this is really accessible to all readers (granted I would prefer darker) and doesn’t go into great details about the imprisonment. This is simply because the point of view is from the 5 year old, which is a good way to avoid getting into the disturbing aspects of living in captivity and can also make the book hard to get used to. The POV of Jack took a while to get use to and could almost be its downfall; but once you do get past that, you will realise this is more a book of discovering the world for the first time. Emma Donoghue really has writing a great book in Room, and while I’ve think this isn’t a perfect book, it is highly recommended.
It took me a short while to get used to Jack's narrative style but once I was, I loved the story.
SpoilerI thought the best part of the book was while Jack and Ma were still in Room but I think that may be because Jack felt secure there. I think his insecurity and confusion made his telling the tale more difficult.
The way the author used Jack's voice to describe what the world appeared to be to him, an outsider, was fantastic. A great way to use the Sociological Eye, I thought.
I was reduced to tears several times - either for happy or sad or just by the powerful emotions the words pulled from me. I think part of it was that I'm a very emotional person but part of it was that I kept imagining my young son in Jack's place.
Room was a great, and at …
It took me a short while to get used to Jack's narrative style but once I was, I loved the story.
SpoilerI thought the best part of the book was while Jack and Ma were still in Room but I think that may be because Jack felt secure there. I think his insecurity and confusion made his telling the tale more difficult.
The way the author used Jack's voice to describe what the world appeared to be to him, an outsider, was fantastic. A great way to use the Sociological Eye, I thought.
I was reduced to tears several times - either for happy or sad or just by the powerful emotions the words pulled from me. I think part of it was that I'm a very emotional person but part of it was that I kept imagining my young son in Jack's place.
Room was a great, and at times difficult, read. I highly recommend it.
I'm still trying to decide what I want to say about this book. And, can I say what I want without including spoilers?
I keep comparing it to McCarthy's The Road, a bit unfavorably. I haven't figured out why yet, but while I was wrecked by the tragedies endured by the characters in McCarthy's book, each setback faced by Jack and Ma in Donaghue's book made me mad at the author. In the former, I was absorbed by the setting and characters. In the latter, I was always aware of the author and the construction of the story, aware of the author as manipulator.
I think one of the things that annoyed me most at the start is what makes this book great. The narrator turns 5 at the start of the book and the viewpoint is very much that of a small child. After a while, you start to ignore the poor grammar and the world as told by Jack becomes absorbing. I guessed the reason they were in Room pretty early on but it is a very unique view and very well done. May not be everyone's cup of tea but 5 stars for being different.
When I first heard about Room I thought it would be a tough harrowing read. However that was not the case. I finished it in a day and I never really got a sense that something horrible had taken place (even though it obviously had) and I suppose this was partly because the story was narrated by a five year old who didn't realise that this bad thing had happened.
I felt that a lot of the characterization was off in places and that some of the story was a bit unbelievable. Jack seemed way too mature in his thoughts and actions for a five year old particularly one that had been living in seclusion his whole life. And I honestly couldn't see Old Nick taking Jack away from the property, no matter what he told Ma. That to me would have presented too much of a risk for him. …
When I first heard about Room I thought it would be a tough harrowing read. However that was not the case. I finished it in a day and I never really got a sense that something horrible had taken place (even though it obviously had) and I suppose this was partly because the story was narrated by a five year old who didn't realise that this bad thing had happened.
I felt that a lot of the characterization was off in places and that some of the story was a bit unbelievable. Jack seemed way too mature in his thoughts and actions for a five year old particularly one that had been living in seclusion his whole life. And I honestly couldn't see Old Nick taking Jack away from the property, no matter what he told Ma. That to me would have presented too much of a risk for him.
I think the author did a good job of showing us how Ma's family reacted to Jack and Jack's naivety of Outside. But ultimately I just felt that the story being in Jack's voice made it seem a little glossed over, and that somewhat contributed to a lack of emotion that you would normally attach to a story like Ma's.
Fantastic book. It perfectly captures the voice of a confused five-year old who's just had his world turned inside out. The chapter 'Dying' was so good I had to stop reading the book for the night, as I knew there would be nothing that could top it.
A very powerful story about the relationship between a boy and his mother. The mother has been held prisoner by Old Nick, a man who kidnapped her 7 years prior. Her son Jack, a child conceived in rape, lives the first five years of his life in a single room with his mother in a shed in Old Nick's backyard. Then they escape, and Jack has to learn about the world outside Room, the place he has spent his entire life. The book is written from Jack's POV in his very idiosyncratic language. It's a heart touching and powerful book.
