Room

Room (2010)
By Emma Donoghue

Apparently inspired by the real-life case of Josef Fritzl, Room is the story of a woman, kidnapped at age 19 and then kept captive in a tiny shed for seven years. Imprisoned, emotionally abused and repeatedly raped, the woman gives birth to her kidnapper's child alone in her prison and is left to raise him on her own, in one small room. Her jailer punishes insubordination by turning cutting off the electricity or by leaving her without food for days at a time. He tells her "I don't think you appreciate how good you've got it here... Plenty girls would thank their lucky stars for a setup like this"
So, not exactly a feel-good book, right? It sounds like a horribly dark, depressing novel that nobody would voluntarily read. Except that Room is narrated by the woman's five-year-old son and through Jack's eyes, things don't seem quite so dark.

To Jack, the "Room" they're imprisoned in is his entire world and Ma is his family. They have comfortable, predictable routines - Phys Ed, Orchestra, Labyrinth, Bath, Hum - they watch TV (but only occasionally because "it rots our brains") and read books and play games. Jack has no idea that Ma is being held against her will; to Jack, imprisonment in Room is just unremarkable, everyday life.

Room starts with Jack's fifth birthday, when Ma tries to explain to him that there's a world outside of their Room. This is a fairly crazy idea to Jack, who struggles to wrap his mind around the idea of something more than his tiny prison home - "When I was a little kid, I thought like a little kid," he says, "but now I'm five I know everything".  So begins a whole new chain of events as Jack and Ma begin plotting their escape. 

The deeply creepy house of Josef Fritzl, inspiration for the room in Room

Jack's narration provides a unique perspective on events - he doesn't quite understand most of what's happening around him and he sometimes embroiders his stories so that things don't make a lot of sense and as a reader, you find yourself not quite understanding what's happening either. Throughout the story of Jack and Ma's imprisonment, Room builds a claustrophobic sense of paranoia and suspense right up to the heart-in-your-throat panic of the pair's escape attempts. Jack is insulated from the nastier aspects of his environment because he doesn't understand them and this helps the reader as well, insulating you from what could be a horrible, depressing novel and instead making it suspenseful, fascinating and very readable.

At times, Jack's narration verges on jarringly infantile - he seems to be pretty smart for five (he can read and write) but his language is that of a much younger child. For example, "We have thousands of things to do every morning, like give Plant a cup of water in Sink for no spilling, then put her back on her saucer on Dresser... I count one hundred cereal and waterfall the milk that's nearly the same white as the bowls, no splashing, we thank Baby Jesus". This isn't how most five-year-olds speak and it grated on me to start with, but when you stop and think about it, this makes a lot of sense. Jack has spent all of his five years in one small room, with one other person and a warped view of the world. It seems right that he should be a unique mixture of intellectually-advanced and developmentally-delayed at the same time. It should be annoying as all hell, but it actually works.

Room is a memorable, powerful novel that manages to transform an awful story into something exceptional. Highly recommended.

9/10