My Bookshelf

Room by Emma Donoghue

I've been a little slow on the book front recently. This is mostly because I have another book that I have to read for school which is nearly 400 pages of details about Dutch culture. As such I've forced myself to avoid picking up the leisure reading in favour of getting my school work done. I took both Room and my school book with me this last week while traveling and although I picked up my Dutch book for a few hours on the train I spent most of my 12hrs on trains with Room in my hand. It should be stated that it did not take me 12hrs to read this book. There is a lot of walking, waiting, and eating done when traveling by train as well.

Anyways, I think I had mentioned this book here before. It is a book that is hugely popular, on the best selling lists, and seemed to be everywhere. I was hesitant to buy it. I'm picky with books and I don't like them to be depressing. It is the story of Jack and his mother, who are held captive by a kidnapper. It is narrated by Jack, who is 5 years old and was born in the Room so all he knows of the world is what he has seen in that space.

Now, I assumed, wrongly, that this would be a very dark, heavy kind of thing to read. It was however, entirely, the opposite. It was easy to read and even fun at times. You don't get bogged down in the emotional heaviness of the situation because Jack doesn't dwell on the stresses and negatives like we might be inclined to. At first it was a little difficult to get into, only because it is written like a 5 year old would talk, with broken words and sentences at times.

I think it would be a great book to read and discuss. Jack's outlook on the world, is naturally, very different than the rest of us. It is an interesting read and one I would definitely recommend to you.

If you're in North America you will more likely recognize the cover below and not the one above, the UK version. This is trivial I suppose but it seemed wrong for me to post a picture of the cover that I hadn't actually spent any time with.