Room

Room
author: Emma Donoghue
published by: Little, Brown and Company
released: September 13th 2010
pages: 321
my rating: 4 out of 5 stars













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.

"You actually lived in TV one time?"

Jack lives with his Ma in Room and he thinks, it's the only thing there is. He thinks there is only one bed, one plant, one rug, one room. For him, life is great and he is perfectly fine with living in room. So when his Ma explains to him that she didn't always live in room, that there is an outside not just in TV and that she want's to escape, he doesn't believe her right away.

"Liar, liar, pants on fire, there's no outside."

That was the most twisted thing in this book. He lived in only one room, was a prisoner there and yet, he doesn't want to leave room. In fact, he even wants to go back once he is outside. Obviously he is a five-year-old, so he doesn't understand lots of things going on around him and that somehow makes it even worse. Despite everything he goes through he is still so naive and innocent, he doesn't understand all the bad things that happened but he still sees and describes them so you still know whats going on and it's just really heart-breaking in some parts.

His Ma is what matters most to Jack, he can't stand not being near her. For him, she is perfect and knows everything best. She tries to make Jack's life in room as normal as possible and raises him as well as she possibly can. Even though Jack never really notices it, she's understandably exhausted, desperate to escape and almost going crazy. She goes through hell and yet she pretends that everything is fine to make Jack happy.

When Jack gets outside for the first time in his life he finds out that he doesn't know much about the world at all and even his Ma doesn't have all the answers. He discovers a for him whole new world and it's amazing how well the author describes the world from the eyes of a five-year-old.

For me, this book was beautiful and really sad at the same time. The innocence of Jack is what touched me most of all while reading this. To be honest I expected it to be more sad and suspenseful because lots of people say that this book broke their heart. Maybe it's because the last book I read made my cry like crazy but I feel like while this book did touch me and made me sad and happy and everything it didn't quite bring out my feelings like I expected it to (maybe that just makes me really heartless, I don't know). It did succeed to make me keep reading because at one point I just couldn't put it down.
I'm actually considering to changing my rating (4 out of 5 stars) for the better while writing this review because there wasn't really anything I didn't like. So yeah, I definitely recommend reading room.