To five-year-old Jack, Room is the world. It's where he was born, it's where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. There are endless wonders that let loose Jack's imagination - the snake under Bed that he constructs out of eggshells, the imaginary world projected through TV, the coziness of Wardrobe below Ma's clothes, where she tucks him in safely at night in case Old Nick comes.
Room is home to Jack, but to Ma it's the prison where she has been held since she was nineteen - for seven years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in that eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But Jack's curiosity is building alongside her own desperation - and she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer.
My thoughts:
Emma Donoghue has received so much praise for her book, ROOM, and I have to be honest and admit that I'm not really getting what all the fuss is about. I may be one of the few people to feel this way, but so it goes. Truthfully, I think the majority of my disappointment lies with the fact that the entire book is told from Jack's perspective and being that he is only 5 years old, well, that perspective is extremely limited in scope and understanding. How can Jack explain to us how his Ma was kidnapped and held captive for seven years, when he can barely grasp the idea that Outside exists for real and not just in TV. Jack can only share with us what he knows to be true, which is his life inside of Room - the daily routines of eating, Phys Ed, reading, Bed,etc. I honestly wanted to give up with this book - I found Jack's voice to be tiresome and repetitive - but for some reason I stuck with it hoping that eventually it would get better. I thought that perhaps once they escape to Outside we would finally get to know more about Ma and perhaps see them reintegrate themselves into the world - of course, I didn't get what I wanted. Don't get me wrong, Donoghue writes about their escape and where they wind up afterward, but for some reason I felt it lacked a depth and realness that would have provided us with a much more powerfully emotional read. I just believe that having Jack, instead of Ma, be the narrator deprived the book from truly reaching its point; which was to capture the essence of a horrifying and heartbreaking experience. I feel as if we didn't really get to know these characters well enough, specifically Ma, whom I feel would have provided the best voice for describing and sharing their ordeal within Room and Outside. Instead of pushing the story along further and truly examining the psychological effects of everything that occurred before Room, within Room and after Room, we merely get a quick overview of the events fleshed out a bit. I found the whole story to be rather underwhelming and unrealistic at times, repetitive with information and not at all as emotional as I had expected. Overall, not one of my favorite reads. I wouldn't recommend this book. Of course, at the same time, I wouldn't mind reading your thoughts on it - perhaps you can show me what I missed.
Happy reading!!