Room: a novel - Rambling Readers

Hardcover, 321 pages

English language

Published March 13, 2010 by HarperCollins Publishers.

ISBN:: 978-1-55468-831-9
OCLC Number:: 637438920

(2 reviews)

To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world....

Told in the inventive, funny, and poignant voice of Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience—and a powerful story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible.

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 …

To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world....

Told in the inventive, funny, and poignant voice of Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience—and a powerful story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible.

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.

43 editions

Jigme Datse reviewed Room by Emma Donoghue

Very difficult to read...

4 stars

The subject matter of this book makes it really very difficult to read, and while it covers it really quite well... It goes from, "This is weird, and I am pretty sure it is something along this line," to getting closer and closer to understanding the basics of what is going on, and it kind of takes the story in a way that it just does not feel like it had to basically not get better until "happily ever after"... Especially that it pretty much was a "happily ever after" ending to a story that would continue to play out in the two main characters lives for months or years quite easily... A little too "ended with a nice bow on it..." Not that you would have wanted it to end with much before when it did based on what the author had. Just it was too tied up at …

The subject matter of this book makes it really very difficult to read, and while it covers it really quite well... It goes from, "This is weird, and I am pretty sure it is something along this line," to getting closer and closer to understanding the basics of what is going on, and it kind of takes the story in a way that it just does not feel like it had to basically not get better until "happily ever after"... Especially that it pretty much was a "happily ever after" ending to a story that would continue to play out in the two main characters lives for months or years quite easily... A little too "ended with a nice bow on it..." Not that you would have wanted it to end with much before when it did based on what the author had. Just it was too tied up at the end. And happy...

Andrew Lane

rated it

Sept. 3, 2010

Subjects

Boys
Fiction
Mother and child
Kidnapping
Psychopaths
Escapes
Garçons
Romans, nouvelles
Mère et enfant
Psychopathes
Évasions