A Room Without A View

Room

by Emma Donoghue

4 out of 5 stars

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.

I first heard about this novel sometime last year when it was very positively reviewed by Entertainment Weekly.  I immediately downloaded the sample, but it ended up sitting for ages in my nook library as a lonely little sample, just waiting for me to give it some attention. 

Most people would probably be turned off by the dark subject matter, but I was drawn immediately to the uniqueness of the story.  It is told in the words of five-year-old Jack, so as an adult reader you gain information in little bits and spurts, as it is delivered to Jack.  

As Jack's narration continues, you get to observe how Ma and Jack have carved out an existence for themselves, and you feel right along with them as they transition between worlds.  The book definitely stuck with me for a while after I finished reading, enough for me to look up some of the relevant true-life cases that inspired the story - Jaycee Lee DuGard and Josef Fritzl, for example.

The novel's power lies not in the graphic details of the crime but in the human elements of the story.  It's a gripping, moving story that I wholeheartedly recommend for anybody willing to explore a nontraditional literary plot.