Emma Donoghue's Room is not a novel for claustrophobes. Half the book takes place in an 11x11 room populated only by a five-year-old boy and his mother. The boy, Jack, is not fully aware of the horror of their circumstances, thanks to his mother's tender and herculean efforts to create an environment rich in language, music, games, and stories. The fact that through Jack's eyes his childhood appears almost idyllic is deeply disturbing to the reader.
To say much about the book's second half risks ruining some genuinely heart-pounding pages, but the family does escape the Room. Once they have reached what Jack refers to as “Outside,” however, both he and his mother have serious trouble adapting to freedom and the real world. Jack is overwhelmed by the sensuous richness of modern life, and perversely missses the intimacy of the Room. His mother, meanwhile, is hounded to despair by judgmental relatives and the media.
Room is a painful book, at times almost unbearably so, but it is also a touching portrait of maternal love. It raises all kinds of questions about the nature of appearance and reality and the ability of the psyche to withstand suffering. There are hilarious moments when Jack's five-year-old mind exposes the limits and absurdities of the English language. It is an enthralling novel, as much a page-turner as Donoghue's Slammerkin (historical fiction about a murderous prostitute in eighteenth-century England), but one that achieves an unusual and haunting depth.
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