Room -Emma Donoghue

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.

Review :

2.5 stars.

I am so disappointed with this book that I won’t be able to explain. This book has an amazing start, jacket and cover, but the writing style killed me. At so many points in this book I wanted it to be a did not finish but I had to reach the end.

The cover of the book holds all the praises and accolades but for me the perspective of the boy was undercutting the major theme that the book was trying to present. The seriousness of the book was being single-handedly ruined by Jack, who was the most obnoxious kid ever. I don’t like kids in general but this book just gave me more reasons. 

The story starts with Jack turning five and for the most part all he knows about his world is this Room and his ability to think of inanimate objects as living, which is fine because it is an actually child psychology phenomenon. Then with the five parts in which the book is divided into, we get to know the real reason for Jack being there, his mother hiding the outside world for him and the reason they are stuck here in the first place. 

This idea is so catching that you need to read more, but beware. There are weird-ass punctuation marks, capitalization of words which go against every rule of writing you’ve ever heard of, initially this idea may seem like a challenge but within pages it will start draining you out. 

I’ve had this book for two weeks and it’s sad that my only motivation to finish it was the fact that I had issued it from the library and didn’t want a fine. I had no intention of finishing it but I did, which is great because there is one more unbearable book in this world that I managed to complete. 

If you want to read this, do it at your own risk. And, I don’t say this often but when I do trust me I’ve thought long and hard about it, so just go and watch the movie, I bet it’s better. 

 

Peace.

–Painting Stories.