Tuesday 17 May 2011

"Room" by Emma Donoghue

Wonderful!

Jack is 5. He lives with his Ma live in Room. Jack sleeps in Wardrobe at night when Old Nick comes.

At first I thought this was going to be a hard book to read. Jack's fifth birthday is described in detail from the point of a five-year-old boy who does not know anything outside Room. I thought it was going to be hard to read a book written by a five-year-old.

I won't say why Jack and his Ma live in Room. Or what happens. You need to find out for yourself. I will only say that in the middle of the book I was so excited because I genuinely had no idea what would happen next that I was speed-reading, tearing the pages with my eyes. There is one moment when a tension is resolved only to be immediately replaced with another tension which takes another few pages to resolve, a twin peak of excitement. And even after that every page had compassion and bitterness and tenderness and anger and even humour.

And the ending was just right.

What a wonderful book.

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2010 and the Women's Prize for fiction in 2011.

May 2011; 401 pages


This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God



No comments:

Post a Comment