From Goodreads:
To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world. . . . It’s where he was born, it’s where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. 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’s the prison where she has been held for seven years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in this eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But with Jack’s curiosity building alongside her own desperation, she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer.Room is a tale at once shocking, riveting, exhilarating–a story of unconquerable love in harrowing circumstances, and of the diamond-hard bond between a mother and her child.
Emma Donoghue is a brilliant writer. Although Room is told from five year old Jack’s point of view I never felt that I was reading as book where I was being talked down to or knew more than a five year old should. I listened to this book and was hooked. The narrators were fantastic, each voice capturing the mood and tone of the story.
This book is not graphic but it is disturbing and I found that I only listened to it when The Bee was otherwise occupied. It is very haunting and left me breathless as I imagined how this mother’s love protected her son from the ugliness that was her world.
Check out Room and other Donoghue books (particularly Slammerkin) from the library (natch) or your favorite book sellers.
-r
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