Room

Room by Emma Donoghue
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a fictional story but in this day and age I could definitely see this storyline happening. A woman is held in captivity in a place called ROOM. She never gets to leave and her only source of natural light is from a skylight. Her captor inpregnates her twice but the first child dies in the birthing process. The second child lives and the story is about how she raises her son with the limitations of being contained to one room. The captor comes once a week and brings what the woman and her son call "Sunday Treat(s)". The treats range from birthday presents for the boy to painkillers for the mother. The boy and his mother create an escape plan that on the first try doesn't work but on the second try they are successful. The unfortunate part about the success is that they have been separate from the Outside that the boy is seeing everything for the first time. The only comparisons he can make are with what he has seen on TV which he thinks is a totally different world on its own. I the idea of being introduced to the world and not knowing about certain things or what to expect was very intriguing and Donoghue did a great job in capturing both the son and mother's fear and surprise. In a realistic sense it brought to light what a scary place the world can be. The ending is bittersweet but it kind of leaves the reader hanging. I would have liked to know about how the son and mother were fairing at different times down the road (ie. 5 years, 10 years). I would technically give the story a 3.5 stars but that isn't an option. The book contains a lot of dialogue which should make for a quick read but towards the end I found myself struggling.

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