Room

I know this review is coming quickly on the heels of my most recent review.  That's because I read this entire book in one day.  Cover to cover.  Couldn't put it down.  This book is nothing if not gripping, fascinating, and constantly keeping your wanting to read just a little bit more.

I can't tell you much about the plot of Room by Emma Donoghue, or I will ruin it for you, and you're going to read it, aren't you?  The blurb on the back should suffice: 

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the world.  It's where he was born, its where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn.  At night, Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where Jack is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits. 

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma its 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 Jack's curiosity is building alongside Ma's own desperation--and she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer.

There.  That doesn't give much away, but it sets the stage for me to comment on a few themes that really interested me as I was reading.  First, everyone mentions it, but that's because it is essential to what makes this such a compelling book:  Five-year-old Jack as the sole narrator is unique and wonderful.  She manges to persuasively bring me into the mind and thoughts of an (albeit precocious) child, and leaves enough clues for the mature reader to gain extraordinary depth from the happenings that Jack only sort of picks up on. 

Second, as told second hand through Jack, the relationship between Ma and Jack has to be constantly managed by Ma in the context of their confinement and total domination by Old Nick.  As Jack gets older, Ma struggles to ensure that Jack sees her as the dominant figure in his life, as the provider and caretaker when Old Nick is acknowledged as the "bringer" and can make Jack's world light up simply by leaving a candy treat.  I was so empathetic with her struggle here.

Finally, Jack's perception of the world through television, his inability to believe that the things he sees on TV exist, and his capitalization of the nouns for things in Room (because they are the only example of such an item he has ever seen) brought me back to my first year of college and the Platonic Forms. Donoghue's implication here is that Jack's experience in Room is similar to the Unenlightened Man Plato describes, who sees the pure Idea - and that any other experiences will be echoes and reflections of the pure Idea or true form.  As you can imagine, this has some heavy implications for Jack.