Courtesy of Litte, Brown & Co.
At times disturbing, at other times thrilling, Emma Donoghue’s Room holds the reader in a state of constant tension. The book, short-listed for the Man Booker Award and winner of the Hughes and Hughes Irish Novel of the Year, was inspired by the Josef Fritzl case, in which an Austrian man held his daughter captive in his basement for over two decades, fathering seven children with her. But Room is not a horror story.
Abducted at age 19, Ma is kept in an 11-foot square shed by Old Nick, who makes regular nightly visits. She is impregnated, has a child, and raises him in this isolation. Five-year-old Jack is our narrator. Choosing to tell this story from this perspective is risky, but Jack’s voice is honest and authentic. The first half of the book takes place entirely inside the four walls of Room. What the reader sees as a tiny isolated world is filled with characters: Wardrobe, Bed, Rug, Plant are all “real” to Jack, and he interacts with them as though they are playmates and siblings, sometimes fighting with them, other times seeking their familiar security. Room is Jack’s world, and to him it is full. There is a television in Room, although Ma only lets them watch two shows a day, lest their brains turn to mush. The things he sees (other children, stores, animals) are “only TV:”
Women aren’t real like Ma is, and girls and boys not either. Men aren’t real except Old Nick, and I’m not actually sure if he’s real for real. Maybe half? He brings groceries and Sundaytreat and disappears the trash, but he’s not human like us. He only happens in the night, like bats.
Necessity being the mother of invention, Jack’s days are filled with routine, including Phys Ed, (bouncing on Bed, and running back and forth in a cleared space), and Orchestra (making “music” by banging on Table or Bed’s legs). Ma tells stories, they sing, they nap, they rhyme. They read the five picture books they have in their possession. Sometimes, they climb up on Table, get close to Skylight, and scream as loudly as possible—“just in case.” Some nights, Jack wakes up to Ma flashing Lamp up at the skylight, although there has never been any chance of escape from Old Nick. Some days Ma is “Gone” —she lies catatonic in bed. He is truly on his own on the days when she succumbs to her horrifying reality.
Ma has created a safe, “normal” environment for Jack, and he knows nothing beyond Room, until Old Nick, in a fit of rage, cuts their power for days. As the room gets colder and the food diminishes, the reader’s sense of dread increases. Then, a leaf falls onto Skylight, and Ma, awakened by some long asleep hope, begins “unlying,” telling Jack that trees are real, not just TV. That she used to live Outside, where there is a whole world, including their family. How Old Nick abducted her, and how she ended up in Room. Jack goes through denial, anger, and acceptance, as quickly as a five-year-old would. When Jack tells her they should ask Old Nick for a telephone for “Sundaytreat,” so that they can call their family to come see them, Ma explains that he’d never give them a phone: “We’re like people in a book, and he won’t let anybody else read it.”
Ma decides that they must escape, and there is no letting up on the tension that Donoghue has created—this is the only book in years that gave me, as a reader, a rush of adrenaline—though once Outside, the addition of more characters somewhat dilutes the relationship between the initial two characters. As Ma returns, damaged, to a changed world, she struggles to reclaim some semblance of her old life; Jack, on the other hand, is reborn into a loud, bright, busy, scary and chaotic world, which he must learn to navigate.
Room is a testament to the power of love between a mother and child, and challenges the reader with difficult questions: Are the characters safer in their 11-by-11 cell than they are Outside? Are the choices that come along with freedom too much for a child, or even an adult? As a parent in this era of “give them everything, let them want for nothing,” Room forces you to question what children really need in their lives in order to thrive, and will pull you in to its tiny space, and show you how expansive the world can be.
