Book Review - Room by Emma Donogohue
February has not been a great month too in terms of reading. I've been trying hard to figure out the reason why, but the time just flew by I am not sure where. I did end up with some wrong choices of books that I had to drop midway - which is very rare for me as I usually push myself to finish it. This derailed the better part of the month's book reading target (I still cringe at this word). But one good outcome from this month was that I spent a lot of time researching the next set of books I want to read. I also stumbled upon some really good blogs that review books with "no spoilers" and neutral points of view.
While I don't have a physical TBR - 2018 shelf to put up a picture of, I am working on getting them up on my goodreads shelf. Also, spent some quality time on goodreads and realized I've overlooked its potential all these years! Lastly on this topic, I also signed up to read 48 books this year on Goodreads. While I will review most of them here, I will also count the ones I don't review as books read this year.
Coming back to this book, I starting reading this early in the month and hit a roadblock at about 40 pages into the book. Probably the writing (I'll come to this in a minute) that took me a while getting used to. Anyway, I pushed myself to pick it up again in the last week of February and as I zoomed past the book, I wondered what was it that made me stop reading this!
Room is about a woman and her 5 year old son held captive in..well a "room". It is written from the perspective of the 5 year old Jack, to whom 'Ma' and the room is his entire world. But for 'Ma', it has been 7 years of captivity and she wants to escape now. The captor, a middle aged man called old Nick visits them daily for all the necessary daily groceries and for his needs. I'd rather not detail out the rest of the details about their life confined in one room lest I let out some (although insignificant and obvious) spoilers. Jack and Ma live a simple, routine life in the room, with rationed food and groceries, imaginative and creative leisure activities and lots of love for each other despite the limited circumstances. Jack has a heightened vocabulary, taught by Ma using creative techniques. I loved how the author maximized the use of TV and furniture in depicting the strong emotional bond between the mother and her son.
What really is worth reflecting on is the life of a child confined to a 11 by 11 feet room since his birth. Imagine the stinted senses, the lack of basic sunlight, air, freedom - physical and otherwise. What is nearly heart breaking is that the boy doesn't know this and believes the room to be the entire world..... "his" entire world unfortunately. Written from the perspective of Jack, the book uses the language of a five year old throughout the book. While in most parts, the author has been able to bring out the precocious innocence of the 5 year old in an almost endearing manner, there are parts which really don't fit into this theme. In some parts, he doesn't seem to know some basic concepts like gender and yet he is pretty conversant with more complex topics like dinosaurs, current news etc. I am willing to go with the author on the belief that the limitations may impact a child in ways really unknown, but I felt a little more research on this would have helped deliver the book a lot better to the audience.
The second part of the book deals with unasked questions about a life led like this and its long term repercussions. While the first part of the book was an emotional turmoil, I preferred the second part of the book which is a bit more practical and offers a breath of fresh air to the book. All in all, a worthy read for the fresh style of writing, the story line and the emotional journey of events. If that is not convincing enough, this story is based on a real life - Fritzl Case. (click on the link to read the case in detail. I have to warn you though, reading about the real case might make the book a little less interesting and give out spoilers). The real life case is bone chilling and almost unbelievable. It makes you question what kind of people exist in this world and how really fortunate we are to be leading normal lives.
I also did not know till the end of the book that there was a movie on this as well. Nothing out of this world the movie was so you could watch it only to relate to the book and personify the characters.
Overall rating - 4 out of 5.
What really is worth reflecting on is the life of a child confined to a 11 by 11 feet room since his birth. Imagine the stinted senses, the lack of basic sunlight, air, freedom - physical and otherwise. What is nearly heart breaking is that the boy doesn't know this and believes the room to be the entire world..... "his" entire world unfortunately. Written from the perspective of Jack, the book uses the language of a five year old throughout the book. While in most parts, the author has been able to bring out the precocious innocence of the 5 year old in an almost endearing manner, there are parts which really don't fit into this theme. In some parts, he doesn't seem to know some basic concepts like gender and yet he is pretty conversant with more complex topics like dinosaurs, current news etc. I am willing to go with the author on the belief that the limitations may impact a child in ways really unknown, but I felt a little more research on this would have helped deliver the book a lot better to the audience.
The second part of the book deals with unasked questions about a life led like this and its long term repercussions. While the first part of the book was an emotional turmoil, I preferred the second part of the book which is a bit more practical and offers a breath of fresh air to the book. All in all, a worthy read for the fresh style of writing, the story line and the emotional journey of events. If that is not convincing enough, this story is based on a real life - Fritzl Case. (click on the link to read the case in detail. I have to warn you though, reading about the real case might make the book a little less interesting and give out spoilers). The real life case is bone chilling and almost unbelievable. It makes you question what kind of people exist in this world and how really fortunate we are to be leading normal lives.
I also did not know till the end of the book that there was a movie on this as well. Nothing out of this world the movie was so you could watch it only to relate to the book and personify the characters.
Overall rating - 4 out of 5.
Comments
Post a Comment