ROOM by Emma Donoghue (HarperCollins), 321 pages, $29.99 cloth. Rating: NNNN
You can see why Emma Donoghue’s Room scored a spot on this year’s Booker short list. It’s powerful, tension-filled and takes a big risk.
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Jack and Ma live in one room. She’s a kidnap victim, and Jack was born there five years earlier, the result of rape by her tormentor. He’s furnished them with a TV and some books, and delivers groceries via a visit that’s usually followed by a sexual assault.
Sound hard to take?
It is, but Donoghue does two things to make it bearable. First, she creates a fascinating mother-son relationship. Ma home-schools the boy, so his vocabulary is rich and his days filled with play, and he has no sense of the real world, so he doesn’t feel deprived.
Second (and just in time), there’s a shift in the narrative so the two do experience Outside. It’s here where Room really takes off. Ma is freaked. The tabloids hover as the two recover in the local psychiatric facility, and her father can’t even look at Jack, the spawn of a monster.
Freedom sounds good to us but is traumatizing for Jack. Imagine everything, every experience – fresh air, for example – every connection being new and hard to fathom after five years of having had only one relationship. And he’s not at all happy about having to share Ma.
Though occasionally Jack seems more precocious than possible, Donoghue succeeds in making him a believable character. And his mother’s devotion is a beautiful thing. Highly recommended.
Room launches at Dora Keogh on Wednesday (September 15). See Readings.
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