Room

I really wanted to like this book. It's been on my tbr list since it came out. I'd heard so many positive reviews and knew that it had been nominated for numerous awards including the Booker Prize. Sadly, by page 20 I wanted to slap a piece of duct tape over the narrator's mouth. That doesn't leave much room for “liking” a story.

Using a 5 year old as the narrator was a unique but ultimately unwise choice. Jack wasn't precocious, he was over-indulged and annoying. His voice wasn't believable or consistent. Sometimes it seemed like he was 5, other times 25 and still other times maybe 2 ½ at most. Jack knows words like hippopotami but not oven (refers to it as stove's tummy). He can sing along with Lady Gaga and Chumbawumba, talk about the Picasso's Guernica and the fall of the Berlin Wall but doesn't know that you say you turn up the thermostat or cook food? Seriously? Ma created a game where he mimics what he hears on tv so he knows proper speech and Ma corrects him every time he says “brung” instead of brought. Yet he's saying thing like “waterfall the milk” or “hot up the room”. Was that supposed to be cute? It wasn't.

Getting past the inconsistent narrative voice was difficult enough, but then I had to stop nitpicking at the details the author didn't quite get right. I can only assume some of these things were because Donaghue set the story in the US but hasn't spent any amount of time here herself - things like Jack watching Dora the Explorer daily when they only got broadcast stations (Dora is a Nickelodeon show, thus requiring access to cable or a satellite service).

The second half of the book was better, but not by much. It's obvious that Jack has some psychological issues to deal with – at the very least he has OCD tendencies (the constant counting of things, especially his teeth) yet that is never really brought up even though Jack is telling everything that happened to him. The one plus was that we got to meet Steppa, easily my favorite character.

Emma Donoghue deserves credit for attempting to tackle such a difficult, repulsive subject. To get inside the idea of being held captive, of not knowing anything beyond an 11x11 space, of being suddenly thrust into the big, scary world etc, is a huge challenge - a challenge, that in the end the author didn't really succeed at completing. I'm still debating between 1 and 2 stars. For now I'll go with 2, but that could change.