Five-year-olds are cute, funny, charming and adorable when they are biologically related to you. When you are not legally obligated to think they are enchanting, five-year-olds are just plain annoying, a little obnoxious and perhaps the biggest attention seekers in the world. There is probably no five-year-old more annoying than Jack. He is incessantly talking about Dora and Sponge Bob and still breastfeeds. Now the fact that Jack is the biological son of a twenty-six-year-old and her captor (who abducted her when she nineteen) makes Jack’s story worthy of the reader's time.
It is through the eyes of Jack that Emma Donoghue tells the story of Room, a compassionate suspense thriller that has touches of crime fiction balanced with infinite parent-child love. Although Donoghue takes an enormous risk by using a kindergarten-age child with no formal schooling as the narrator, readers are able to get past the gimmicky quality of the narrative voice to appreciate Jack’s insights that make this novel radically different from other exploitative captivity tales. Based on headlines about young girls in captivity like Elizabeth Fritzl, Natascha Kampusch, Sabine Dardenne, Jaycee Lee Dugard and Elizabeth Smart, the author manages to surpass media hype and create a profoundly original tale of a young mother giving her son a healthy well-balanced life in a 12-foot-square room. They play games, read books, have physical education classes, talk about God and Heaven, and watch a substantial amount of TV for both information and escape. Jack feels his truncated world around him deeply, has an unlimited imagination and makes everything a character by referring to all objects as proper names Room, Rug, Sink, Wardrobe, Plant and Tooth (which literally is his mother’s decayed tooth that she extracts herself and he saves as an unusual companion). Everything in the room is tranquil and everything outside the room is horrifying and foreign.
But when his mom, who is only referred to as Ma throughout the book, learns that her captor Old Nick lost his job, she fears what he would do to them before he ever allowed the bank to discover his soundproof shed. So, she plans an escape that fully rests on Jack’s shoulder. She insists that he must be brave and he insists that he is scared, so together they create the “word sandwich” that they call “scave.” Although he is “scave,” Jack follows his charge and the action becomes spellbinding. The events after the escape attempt are poignant and darkly stirring. At times the post-escape reality depicted is far more treacherous and repugnant than their life in confinement; sometimes so atrocious that is uncomfortable to read. But despite the shocking twists and turns, readers stay connected to Donohue’s unflinching tale of horror, rebirth and genuine parental love. The freshness of this novel will be attracting readers for a longtime to come.
