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A review by thewallflower00
Room by Emma Donoghue
5.0
This might be the best book I ever read. Certainly the best book I read this quarter, and maybe the best all year. From the moment I saw its description, I was too intrigued.
Room takes place in just that: a room. The entire novel revolves around a woman locked in this 12x12 space that she never leaves. Just that alone had me hooked -- what happened? Was there an apocalypse? Is this a survival story? How do you write an entire book that takes place in one room? Much less a book that keeps getting onto "best of the year" lists.
How do you keep that intriguing? How do you keep it from being claustrophobic torture porn? Answer: you make it from the POV of a five-year-old boy. Everything is fascinating to a five-year-old. (As the parent of one, I can attest to this.) And this boy has lived all of his life in "room". Every inch, every crack. Can you imagine what would happen if he ever got outside of it? Would it be like Tarzan? Would he just freak out? Would he need to be fostered?
Even though the walls never change, the reader is never bored. The novel is intense, psychological, full of horror and despair and optimism. I had to re-read the middle-of-the-book climax because I was so afraid of what was going to happen I was speed-reading. I never do that. Only once I found out, I had to go back and re-read it.
Sometimes I just had to stop reading altogether because it got too intense. Some of that probably comes from being a parent myself, and part of it from my own life. In college, I rarely left my dorm room. That year I spent without a roommate was one of the best of my life. I've often thought I might be happy if I could just live in a single room with just the computer and a bed, etc. But then, there's a difference when you get to choice versus no-choice, no matter what the contents of a room are.
Definitely read this book.
Room takes place in just that: a room. The entire novel revolves around a woman locked in this 12x12 space that she never leaves. Just that alone had me hooked -- what happened? Was there an apocalypse? Is this a survival story? How do you write an entire book that takes place in one room? Much less a book that keeps getting onto "best of the year" lists.
How do you keep that intriguing? How do you keep it from being claustrophobic torture porn? Answer: you make it from the POV of a five-year-old boy. Everything is fascinating to a five-year-old. (As the parent of one, I can attest to this.) And this boy has lived all of his life in "room". Every inch, every crack. Can you imagine what would happen if he ever got outside of it? Would it be like Tarzan? Would he just freak out? Would he need to be fostered?
Even though the walls never change, the reader is never bored. The novel is intense, psychological, full of horror and despair and optimism. I had to re-read the middle-of-the-book climax because I was so afraid of what was going to happen I was speed-reading. I never do that. Only once I found out, I had to go back and re-read it.
Sometimes I just had to stop reading altogether because it got too intense. Some of that probably comes from being a parent myself, and part of it from my own life. In college, I rarely left my dorm room. That year I spent without a roommate was one of the best of my life. I've often thought I might be happy if I could just live in a single room with just the computer and a bed, etc. But then, there's a difference when you get to choice versus no-choice, no matter what the contents of a room are.
Definitely read this book.