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.