Published: 5:02PM BST 30 Jul 2010
Category : Drama , thriller .
Buy from here : Uk , France , Germany , Canada
A young woman imprisoned in a modified garden shed somewhere in America, regularly raped by her captor, but otherwise left alone, with enough food, a few books, a television. She becomes pregnant, gives birth. Emma Donoghue’s novel is clearly inspired by cases such as those of Elizabeth Fritzl, and Jaycee Lee Dugard in California, though what it made me think of most is the hundreds of identikit detective thrillers on our shelves boasting a gruesome serial killer and a helpless female victim in or near his clutches.Room turns this scenario inside out. It is all about the mother and is narrated by her five-year-old son, Jack.
The mother (“Ma” – we never learn her name) has kept herself sane by devoting all her energy to giving Jack as normal an upbringing as possible. Their average day in “Room” (their 12ft-by-12ft domain) is filled with “Phys Ed”, cooking lessons, model-making and, at night, standing under their skylight and screaming for help. Although they use the television for education and distraction, Jack has no idea that anything at all exists outside “Room”: the sun and moon are God’s two faces, and Jack is always safe asleep in “Wardrobe” when “Old Nick” comes in through “Door”.
This child’s-eye view of the world may sound kooky, but it reads as smooth as ice-cream, and Donoghue quickly builds a compelling view of this strange existence. So heroic is Ma, and so happy Jack, that it comes as a shock when, following their escape (that much I must let slip), we hear them described on the television news. “The despot’s victims have an eerie pallor and appear to be in a borderline catatonic state,” the reporter says, while Jack is a “malnourished boy, unable to walk”.
Donoghue treats the trials of “Outside” with the same sensitive imagination that she applied to “Room”. For Jack it’s rain, wind, germs and people touching him (“like electricity”); for Ma it’s relations with her parents, now separated, who seem to have worked through the loss of their 19-year-old daughter rather too thoroughly. There’s a brilliantly spiky television interview, too, with Ma skewering the interviewer at every turn.
“You breastfed him. In fact, this may startle some of our viewers, I understand you still do?”
Ma laughs.
The woman stares at her.
“In this whole story, that’s the shocking detail?”
Does the novel give a genuine insight into what it’s like to go through such an ordeal? Maybe that’s going too far, but as a life-affirming fable of parent-child love, and an antidote to the prurience of so much crime fiction, it’s a triumph, and deserves to be a hit.
Let's not forget to comment , i hope you like this read like me , surely its worth your time thats why its my latest recommendation :) keep smiling
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