ROOM / Review

Author: Emma Donoghue

Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company;

First Edition edition (September 13, 2010)
ISBN-10: 0316098337

Book Description:

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.

My Review:

Jack, a five year old boy, loves the only home he has ever known, a backyard shed which has been turned into a prison. He calls it Room. He was born there, plays and sleeps there, but NEVER leaves. He has only heard about the outside world from his mother and seen it on TV.

Ma was kidnapped when she was a nineteen year old college student; raped, and eventually gave birth to the only joy in her life, Jack.

This tender, but somewhat disturbing story, reveals the experience and varied emotions of victims of kidnapping, torture, imprisonment, and the eventual entrance to the outside world. But best of all, we read the story of a mother's love. 4 stars****

(Thank you to Hachette Book Group for my review copy.)