ROOM by Emma Donoghue

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When I read the reviews of ROOM, I didn't think I could bring myself to read it. A young woman is abducted and locked in a backyard hut, serving as her kidnapper's sex slave for years. I don't normally read gruesome, ripped-from-the-tabloids tales, especially one narrated by the five-year-old son of the prisoner and her keeper. But every review I read was more admiring than the last, so I had to give it a try. Once I started, I was hooked.

Jack, turning five as the story opens, has never known a person except his mother (and the shadowy figure of the man)or a world outside of Room. (The article-less name echoes a child's earliest speech: Ma. Bed. Room.) He does not know that he is a prisoner; he passes each day eating, sleeping, and playing with his mother. And yet through the amazing mother-son dialogue that fills the pages, we learn before he does the truth of his situation. Eventually he too must learn the truth, for only he can be the instrument of their escape.

ROOM is part thriller, part celebration of the bond between mother and child, part how-to manual for parents stuck at home with children. Donoghue imbues Ma with amazing creativity and resourcefulness as she struggles to give her child a "normal" life in an impossible situation. On a larger level, the story can be read as a metaphor for the lifelong move from total dependence to independence we all face--and the challenges that come with both bondage and freedom.




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