Room

"Room" by Emma Donoghue
Hardcover: 321 pages
Published: Little, Brown and Company (September 13, 2010)

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.

This book is a big "WOW" from me.  To have the complete perspective of a 5 year-old boy and be so compelling is truly amazing.  I could really imagine what this boy's (and mother's) situation would be like.  The author was gifted in the way that she could dream up such a nightmare, but in a realistic sense. You are given both sides of the story, really.  The boy only knows his world, the room, since birth.  He doesn't know what the outside is or feels like.  It's unknown to him other than TV.  His mother lied to him over the years as a protective measure and said that outside wasn't real.  When he turns five, she decides that she can't take it any longer and begins telling him the truth.  You only find out about half-way through the book that the mother was stolen 7 years before and forced to live in an 11x11 room that has been her world and her son's.


The book takes a turn when they are finally free of their prison, but Jack (her son) has to learn all about the real world he didn't know existed.  One can imagine what it must be like to not know something, and then having to learn about everything all at once.  They each learn to live in the world outside the room as only they can.  A very good book.  I really recommend this book to everyone.