Room

A Novel

Hardcover, 321 pages

English language

Published Sept. 2, 2010 by Little, Brown and Company.

ISBN:
978-0-316-09833-5
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OCLC Number:
1033209852

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5 stars (3 reviews)

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

It's where he was born. It's where he and his 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 below 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 has been held since she was nineteen--for seven years. Trhough her fierce love for her son, she has created a live for him in that eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But Jack's curiosity is building alongside her own desperattion--and she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer.

Told in the poignant and funny voice of Jack, Room is a story of unconquerable love in harrowing circumstances, and of the …

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.

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rated it

5 stars
avatar for bluestocking

rated it

5 stars