Room

Paperback, 321 pages

English language

Published Jan. 2, 2010 by Picador.

ISBN:
978-0-330-51992-2
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
650932875

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5 stars (3 reviews)

Jack is five, and excited about his birthday. He lives with his Ma in Room, which has a locked door and a skylight, and measures eleven feet by eleven feet. He loves watching TV, and the cartoon characters he calls friends, but he knows that nothing he sees on screen is truly real - only him, Ma and the things in Room. Until the day Ma admits that there's a world outside...

Told in Jack's voice, Room is the story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible. Unsentimental and sometimes funny, devastating yet uplifting, Room is a novel like no other.

44 editions

Uncomfortable read

4 stars

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

5 stars
avatar for bluestocking

rated it

5 stars