Room

Author: Emma Donoghue
Published: 2010, Little, Brown and Company
336 pages

Jack has lived all five years of his life in "Room" with Ma.  He knows the four walls of Room and all the furniture inside and nothing else.  The only glimpse he gets of the outside world comes from the TV he is allowed to watch for an hour a day, but Ma tells him that most of the things he sees on the TV (other children, ice cream, potato chips) are just pretend.  And sometimes at night, while Jack is hiding in Wardrobe, he gets a whiff of fresh air when Old Nick types in the code that opens Door and enters Room.

When Old Nick is in Room, Ma is not herself, but Jack busies himself by counting the number of times Bed creaks as he lies in Wardrobe.  On the mornings after Old Nick's visits, sometimes Ma has spots on her neck and a hoarse voice, but they go right along with their day as usual.  One day Jack's world is turned upside-down when Ma reveals that she has been lying to him for his whole life, and that the things he sees on TV actually do exist outside of Room.

I don't want to give too much away, because this is a book I feel many of you might actually go out and read yourselves, but I will say that the reason Jack and Ma are in Room is far too dark for innocent Jack to comprehend.  Writing from his perspective, Donoghue has done a great job of keeping the reader in the dark but still intrigued.  If you still aren't convinced, watch this creepy video from Amazon.

Another thing I'll say about this book is that I think the characters are extremely well developed.  Jack's character is a bit contradictory at times, in that sometimes he cannot understand a simple concept or word and other times he is making extremely mature observations and conclusions.  But besides those minor slip-ups, Jack is a good character.  Sometimes he hates Ma, and sometimes he loves her.  He's a good kid, but not too good.  Ma is another one who's totally believable.  She's not a saint -- sometimes she loses her patience with Jack, sometimes she stays in Bed for an entire day -- but she's still likable.  Donoghue proves that characters can have flaws and still be likable, and I wish other authors would follow her lead.

This book won an Alex Award, which doesn't actually mean that much in the literary world, but it's another one of those lists I recommended for finding good books.  I also recommend not reading any of the reviews unless you want to know the ending, which I know most of you will probably do anyway.  One person I know for sure will do this is my own Ma, who, somewhere in a basement, is sitting at a computer and clicking "Add to Cart" on her Amazon account right this minute.  And I also know that as soon as my Ma gets her copy in the mail, she will proceed right to the last page to see how it ends.  So much for keeping it mysterious!