Room

Title : Room

Writer : Emma Donoghue

Number of Page : 361 halamana

Publisher : Back Bay Books

To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world. . . . It's where he was born, it's where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits. 

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma it's the prison where she has been held for seven years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in this eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But with Jack's curiosity building alongside her own desperation, she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer.

Room is a tale at once shocking, riveting, exhilarating--a story of unconquerable love in harrowing circumstances, and of the diamond-hard bond between a mother and her child.

In my opinion:

The story is very unique because the narrator was 5-year-old kid who had limited understanding about the world. And he lived in a very small, dark room with his mother whom he called "Ma". 

I didn't know what to expect with this book at the beginning. For me, it was quite boring because the first part mainly told about the insignificant routines and activities that Jack did with his mother. Well, what could you expect from a kid? Jack always said anything he did was interesting, but actually it was ordinary for an adult, hahaha... 

I started to get hooked with the book when I realized that Jack and his mother were prisoners. They were never allowed to go outside, see sunlight, and meet other people other than "Old Nick" who visited Jack's mother regularly for sex.

One day, Jack's mother made a plan to escape and she tried very hard to explain the plan to Jack. It was frustrating. How could you make a little kid understand and remember all the plans? But, it made the escape scenes very thrilling. I kept hoping Jack not messing thing up. 

I admit that I hated the part when Jack could not explain the whole events to the police. But, I think it was real because the way Jack talked was like any other small kids. He used stupid vocabularies, fairy tale descriptions, and other nonsense that he knew based on what he learnt so far in his life. I don't know. This book is not like any other books that I've read. I felt that it was genius because Emma Donoghue could write narration that sounds like a shallow and naive little kid. But, sometimes I felt like wanting to give Jack a punch because he didn't know anything. Ugh... I must be a bad person thinking like that. 

Anyway, I still like the story. The transition that Jack had to face in the outside world was believable. The only thing was that I could not really sympathize with Jack's mother. I mean she spent 7 years of her youth in the dark. I should feel sad for her. But since the one that told the story was Jack, I couldn't get into his mother's head to know what she thought. And Jack, of course, didn't even know if his mother was feeling trapped and hopeless.

4/5