Ten Things About Room

Room is the remarkably claustrophobic and shockingly life affirming new novel by Emma Donoghue. The story begins on Jack's fifth birthday. He has never been outside and doesn't even know the real world exists beyond the confines of the sealed 11x11 room that he inhabits with his young mother. She is a kidnapping victim, abducted while in college, and has been held hostage for seven years. Room is about how she has made a life for her growing boy under these harsh conditions. Their windows on their world are a skylight, a television and a handful of books.

Here's what struck me most about this unique piece of fiction:

• Jack's voice is incredible. Donoghue tells this intense tale entirely through the voice of a five-year old boy. He is wise emotionally but simultaneously innocent about the world. His mother has worked hard to educate him and his vocabulary is impressive but realistic. Donoghue immediately creates the voice and the character in the opening lines of the novel. "Today I'm five. I was four last night going to sleep in Wardrobe, but when I wake up in bed in the dark I'm changed to five, abracadabra. Before that I was three, then two, then one, then zero. 'Was I minus numbers?'"
  


• On the surface this is a tale of confinement. Mother and son are trapped in the room and never, ever leave. They eat, sleep, exercise in that tiny space. However, Jack sees the room from the inside out. Since he is the narrator, we are able to see the room as an entire world. He sleeps in the wardrobe, they roll up the rug to make an exercise track and he doesn't get bored or depressed any more often than a typical five-year old boy. His mind is spacious. He is happy in that room with his mother.
  


• Jack's mother is one of the great heroine's of recent fiction. Despite being tormented and sexually abused for years by her captor she manages to create a safe haven for her child. Old Nick, the middle age abuser and the boy's father, has never seen Jack. When Old Nick enters the room, Jack is tucked tightly into the wardrobe. He knows the boy exists, but he also knows not to challenge the mother about seeing him. The boy is having an imaginative childhood through the books, stories and television shows that he is experiencing with his mother. Despite the depravity, he is experiencing life more fully than many people.
  


• The escape plan that Jack's mother hatches will be enough to keep any parent reading straight through. Don't start reading it after 9 p.m. if you want to get to sleep. She's relying on her child to outwit her captive. Jack has never been separated from his mother, but now he must try to enter the outside world and carry out a sophisticated plan. "'You forgot Police,' she says. 'Count on your fingers. Sick, Truck, Hospital, Police, Save Ma....My head is tired but Ma says we have to practice the being sick bit, that the most important."
  


• The climax of the book occurs about halfway in. The whole second half of the novel, while good, cannot sustain the tension of the first 150 pages. I would have preferred a shorter book by about 50-75 pages. Life after the room is a bit too pedestrian compared to the originality shown in the room. Surprisingly, life in the room (a complete contrivance) seems natural and real, while the world outside of the room feels a bit contrived.
  


• The media are portrayed as vultures and sycophants in the novel. It feels a bit heavy handed and stereotypical. The worst scene in the novel occurs when an Oprah type interviewer starts asking tough, painful questions of the mother.
  


• Jack believes that what he sees on television is not a representation of the real world. The mother began this conceit so that Jack wouldn't understand the painful reality of their situation. Once he turns five his mother starts trying to prove to him that there is a world outside of their soundproof room. When Jack sees an airplane flying above the wire re-enforced skylight, he begins to understand the concept of outside. "I see it through the honeycomb, the thing so small I think it's just one of those floaters in my eye, but it's not. It's a little line making a thick white streak on the sky." Donoghue does an extraordinary job in letting us experience Jack's changing perception through his eyes.
  


• The novel to some extent is a critique of our materialistic, ultra-busy culture. Jack and his mother have all the time in the world in their room. It may be torture for his mother, but for Jack it allows him time to learn, imagine and play at his leisure. In the outside world people are too caught up in petty concerns to truly experience the world and revel in each others company. I agree with what Donoghue is saying, but I thought the reader could draw their own conclusions. There is a scene with Jack's uncle's family that was the shopping experience from hell. A little subtlety could have gone a long way.
  


• In Aimee Bender's front-page New York Times Book Review article she took issue with the fact that Jack is still being breast fed. It's not for nutritional nourishment, but rather for security and comfort for both mother and child. I found those scenes to be among the most tender and beautiful in the book. How could she possibly have weaned him in those circumstances? What purpose would it have served?
  
• Donoghue ends the novel magnificently. After the somewhat disappointing last 100 pages, the final few are just perfect. I don't want to ruin the scene but I will say that Jack is able to help his mother begin the healing process in a completely believable and emotionally compelling manner.