Room

a novel

Paperback, 321 pages

English language

Published Jan. 2, 2015 by Harper Perennial.

ISBN:
978-1-4434-4962-5
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
944222641

View on OpenLibrary

(3 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 coziness of Wardrobe beneath Ma’s clothes, where she 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 her 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 …

44 editions

Uncomfortable read

Five-year-old Jack and Ma, live happily together in Room, or so Jack thinks.

I hesitate to say I like this book, but I found it believable as a story told from the perspective of a child. I’m not sure that I could have stomached this written from Ma’s POV. The POV chosen allows the horrors visited upon Ma and Jack to unfurl obliquely throughout. Though Jack is the protagonist, it was Ma who occupied my thoughts. I can’t help but think about all the real Ma’s out there. This, for me, is true horror. The stuff that can and does happen, not the things that go bump in the night.

avatar for bluestocking

rated it

avatar for bluestocking

rated it

Subjects

  • Boys
  • Fiction
  • Mother and child
  • Kidnapping
  • Psychopaths
  • Escapes