Room: A Novel

Room: A Novel by Emma Donoghue


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. 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's the prison where she has been held for seven years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in this eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But with Jack's curiosity building alongside her own desperation, she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer.

Room is a tale at once shocking, riveting, exhilarating--a story of unconquerable love in harrowing circumstances, and of the diamond-hard bond between a mother and her child.


Room: A Novel was recommended to me by a friend, so thank you Hannah. I had no idea what I was about to read, she asked me to read it so I read it. This is the most tragic and heartbreaking tale that I just couldn’t put down. It’s told from the perspective of a five year old and at first it was hard to adjust to that way his narrative is written.

The first couple of chapters were hard to read but as I started to understand his perspective the shocking comprehension start coming in quick succession, almost forcing me to put it down. But I shoulder on feeling waves of emotion anger being my predominate one for first 45% of this novel.

From this point on my anger transformed into relief, that only lasted until about 60% of the novel. Jack and his mother were out of the frying pan, but the stove was just as dangerous. Then the tragedy of their situation came into play. Empathy and Heartbreak set in and it’s the lasting impression of the novel.

Emma Donoghue perfectly capture the voice of a five year old. It draws out all of my sympathies to this fiction family. Their situation could be happening anywhere in American. The reality is that the conclusion of this novel could have been drastically more harrowing and darker; making me grieves for the untold tales that did.

This tale is too heartbreaking for me to give a five because I don’t think I could read this novel again. Yet it’s definitely seared into my brain which I don’t know if that’s a good thing or bad think. I do think it’s a modern classic that high school aged should be made to read. I think it shows how limited the perspective of our world can truly be.


I give Room: A Novel 4 out 5.