Room

I was extremely hesitant to read Emma Donoghue's book Room, which is about a five-year-old boy and his mother, kidnapped seven years earlier, who live in a locked garden shed. It sounds like a horror novel, doesn't it? Or the worst kind of exploitative crime fiction. In fact, because it is told matter-of-factly from the little boy's point-of-view -- and because Donoghue chooses not to focus on the violence done the mother -- it is not difficult to read at all. It is fascinating and heartwarming, actually, as well as riveting. Once I'd started it, I could not put it down and in fact stayed up until the wee hours finishing it, although I had to get up with my own kids early in the morning the next day. In this video, Donoghue, who often works with fairy tales, discusses how the story of confinement is an archetypal one and how her choice to write the book from the boy's perspective makes it more like science fiction or a work of fantasy than what she calls "a sob story."  This is a brilliant book -- a must-read. And it definitely, and weirdly, belongs on my ever-lengthening list of the best books about childhood for adults. (I need to update that list soon.)

Comments

[Steph Burgis]

I'm glad you posted about it - I hadn't planned to read it, for exactly the reasons that made you initially hesitant, even though I loved her book Kissing the Witch. Now I'll give it a try. Thanks!

[Steph]

I bet you'll really like it, Steph! I am reading an historical novel by her called The Sealed Letter right now. It's good, too.