Monday, March 5, 2012

Room by Emma Donoghue





  • Paperback: 401 pages
  • Genre:  Fiction
  • Publisher: Picador 2010
  • Source: Purchased in the UK.
  • First Sentences : ‘Today I’m five. I was four last night going to sleep in Wardrobe, but when I wake up in Bed in the dark I’m changed to five, abracadabra.’
  • Review Quote : ‘A triumph’ Daily Telegraph
  • My Opinion: This was as good if not better than I expected it to be.


  • This is a very moving and emotional novel that is going to stay with me for a long time. Imagine a five year old boy, Jack the protagonist of this shocking story, who believes that the 11 feet by 11 feet room that he and his mother live in is the entire world!  A harrowing thought indeed and Emma Donoghue has succeeded in writing a riveting novel that had me reading late into the night about this disturbing experience.
    Her imagination really takes you into the world of Room, where Jack was born and has lived his entire life with his mother. The bond between mother and son has been strong enough that they have survived five years, though you really wonder how as you get drawn into this dark story. They spend the days exercising, playing, reading, learning, watching television, eating and sleeping; somehow surviving this unimaginable life on the small Sunday treats their gaoler allows them! Although a strange life for Jack, because he knows no different it is normal, especially as he believes that nothing he sees on television is actually real.
    Room might be home to Jack but to his mother it has been a prison for seven years. As her son is growing up and becoming more curious about every aspect of their world, however limited it might be, she becomes more and more desperate about their situation. I am not going to reveal any more here for fear of spoiling it for any of you that may now be tempted to read this.


  • This link will take you to a very intriguing trailer for Room well worth viewing as is the following interview with Emma Donoghue. Beware these may or may not spoil your reading of the book, you are warned.




  • Uploaded by PanMacmillanAus on Mar 18, 2010

    Emma DonoghueEmma Donoghue

  • Emma was born on October 24th 1969 in Dublin Ireland, the youngest of eight children. She attended Catholic convent schools in Dublin, apart from one year in New York at the age of ten. In 1990 she earned a first-class honours BA in English and French from University College Dublin, and in 1997 a PhD (on the concept of friendship between men and women in eighteenth-century English fiction) from the University of Cambridge. Since the age of 23, Donoghue has earned her living as a full-time writer. After years of commuting between England, Ireland, and Canada, in 1998 she settled in London, Ontario, where she lives with her partner and their son and daughter.

  • Biographical information and photo used in this post are with thanks to the following websites.
     Emma Donoghue - Official Website.
    Goodreads Author Profile