Room - Rambling Readers

Paperback, 321 pages

English language

Published March 13, 2019 by Harper Perennial.

ISBN:: 978-1-4434-5901-3
OCLC Number:: 1099530400

(2 reviews)

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the world. It’s where he was born. It’s where he and Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. There are endless wonders that let loose Jack’s imagination: the snake under Bed that he constructs out of eggshells; the imaginary world projected through the TV; the coziness of Wardrobe, where Ma tucks him in safely at night, in case Old Nick comes.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it’s the prison where she’s been held since she was nineteen—for seven long years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in that eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But Jack’s curiosity is building alongside Ma’s own desperation, and she knows that Room cannot contain either indefinitely.

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 …

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the world. It’s where he was born. It’s where he and Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. There are endless wonders that let loose Jack’s imagination: the snake under Bed that he constructs out of eggshells; the imaginary world projected through the TV; the coziness of Wardrobe, where Ma tucks him in safely at night, in case Old Nick comes.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it’s the prison where she’s been held since she was nineteen—for seven long years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in that eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But Jack’s curiosity is building alongside Ma’s own desperation, and she knows that Room cannot contain either indefinitely.

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.

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

Mother and child, fiction
Fiction, psychological