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Room
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To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits. Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough ... not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work. Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, ROOM is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.
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SPOILER ALERT: My review contains SPOILERS. I have chosen to hide the spoilers within drop-down links so I don’t ruin the book for other readers.
Fun fact: this book is a fictional story based on a true event. My review is based solely on the book itself and not the event that inspired it. You can find out more at the end of this review.
The concept of this story is an intriguing one. The narrative voice written as a 5 year old boy is unique, but it does comes with some presentation drawbacks that ultimately decided my star rating.
Jack knows big vocabulary words and seems to rationalize pretty well for a 5 year old. He also shows some typical toddler curiosities that have some believable aspects to his character, particularly with being naive and lack of experience in the “Outside” world. What wasn’t believable was the inconsistency of his speech.
Ma doesn’t speak to him like he’s a baby at any time in the story nor does anyone else for that matter; and yet, Jack’s language goes from intelligent vocabulary to using made up adjectives and words to describe his thoughts; sometimes in the same paragraph. I know he’s 5 years old, but Jack’s character was inconsistent and distracting.
Jack’s character is not the only one to have flaws though. Every character of the book felt flat and detached to me. I understand that the concept of the entire story is to be assumed that being a hostage explains the why’s. But that’s not an answer…. it’s only the cause, and I wanted much more than just a cause. This is where more emotional depth would have been good to have.
Everything we know in this story is through Jack. This includes overheard conversations between other people. There are many incidences where Jack doesn’t fully understand a situation, yet we already know the details because they were revealed to us another way.
View SpoilerWhat this book lacked was emotions. The raw revealing and healing process formed and reformed with others as well as themselves. This story could have been extremely moving and touching, but in the end it fell flat and condensed. Even boring at times, especially during the “Outside” part of the story. The bulk of the plot felt rushed and the mediocre fillers felt excessive.
View SpoilerOverall, I think it had a lot of potential that wasn’t fully explored but I don’t regret reading the book either.
Room was based on a true event
Donoghue’s book, “Room” was inspired by a real-life kidnapping that took place in Austria in 2008. Elisabeth Fritzl was held captive by her own father for 24 years and was freed when her oldest daughter became ill and needed medical care.
24 YEARS!? Holy crap! Can you imagine?!
