BT book club: Room.....What did you think??

I'll take a glass of Cabernet....

The approach of the writter to tell the story through the eyes of Jack was genius in my opinion, and what made the book unique.  I don't think many people would have been able to stomach the book if the innocense of Jack wouldnt have served as a ray of sunshine in what otherwise would have been an extremely dark read.

And yes, just talking about it works...No need to follow a format

Already on the cabernet

Much more palatable than I was expecting.  I didn't want to read it because I thought it would make me sick to the stomach, but the kid's POV made it entirely simplistic and as Aquagirl put it, innocent.

To be honest, I was expecting something that was more intense and I didn't get any of that.  I got nervous about the escape but other than that, I don't think my emotions varied at all.  And that is saying something since I am a bit of a basket case at times.  For me, the book was enjoyable but not the best I have read. I don't even remember if I shed a tear and that is almost unheard of for me

I actually found the second part of the book more disturbing than the first.  I felt that "outside" didn't fully address the psychological needs of the child, especially the mother.  I understand that for her, she was free, but there were times where she didn't seem to understand where her kid was coming from.

Well, I must go to bed.  I have spent the day up on a ladder installing sunshades on our deck.  Now we have a big thunderstorm coming and I am wondering if the shades will still be there in the morning.  Fingers crossed.  Looking forward to hearing what everyone else thought.

Overall I enjoyed the book and am glad I read it.

I liked the idea of writing from a 5 year old but it was not 'true' to that most of the time. I have a bunch of kids and taught pre-school for a number of years and have had kids very verbal for their age and not so much. I've never had a kid that had an AMAZING vocabulary on one end but such poor English at the same time. I found this annoying and contradictory. I gave it some grace thinking with his exposure he would surely be different and after a while I was able to let this go and roll with it but it was very off-puting in the first few chapters. The way he referred to everything like a proper noun was really annoying - Room, Wardrobe, Table etc.

I completely 'got' the second half of the book. I absolutely ADORE my kids and enjoy spending time with them but I can totally see how the Mom needed her space once they were out. Part of her knows he needs her now more than ever but part of her needs to be independant of him for the first time in 5 years. I am very fortunate that my kids are almost never sick and none of them have been sick for a long amount of time but I imagine it is like that. Your kid needs to be on/with you because they feel like crap and you look forward to having the excuse to go to the bathroom just to have 5 minutes to yourself. I could really feel her struggle with this.

It also made sense to me that he wanted to go back to the house and I am glad she let him do that so he could see it with his 'new eyes' and the mystery was gone once he saw it. He had all these fond memories of the Room but then realized it wasn't reality.

As a lactivist and extended nursing Mom I was happy to see they addressed this. I would imagine for some folks it would seem odd to be breastfeeding a 5 year old child but the average natural weaning age world wide is 4.3 and when you consider weaning age in the US is under 6 months you know there is a lot of extended nursing going on all over the world. This also made sense from a survival standpoint, as long as she had milk she could feed her child if Nick decided not to show up for a couple of days, she could keep Jack alive.

A few people in the other thread stated the book just ended. Having a Kindle I didn't know what page I was on or how many more pages there were. One of the books ended when it said I was 95% done so I thought it was going to be very sudden. I felt this book ended exactly when it should have and I was ready for it to be done. I kind of felt like they needed to have their privacy and I was somehow infriging on that - I know, weird.

You guys have taken the words right out of my mouth - this was a story with a very  heavy and disturbing topic, but having it told from the innocent and basic perspective of a 5-yr old made it lighter and easier to get through.

I found the second half of the book - after they were 'free' - to be the most thought-provoking. I'm not a parent but I can sympathize with the mother's character needing her space while her child just needs her more.

It has really stuck with me, I finished it about 2 weeks ago but find myself still thinking about it. A great book, brilliantly crafted and written.

I liked the book.  I'd give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.

I had no idea what the book was about when I started reading it.  If I had, I doubt if I would have read it.  BUT, I'm really happy I did.

I liked the pace of the story. The author set the hook early and kept the energy up.  I thought the characters were developed well and were believable, for the most part.

I know that some of the readers took issue with, or had difficulty, reading the story from Jack's perspective and his vocabulary.  It took me a while to get used to it, but I found it cleaver.  I'll admit that it did get tedious toward the end.  Hey, it's a lot easier to understand and follow than the first part of Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury". :-)

I'm 43 year old man, who has never had kids.  I can't discuss the mother-son relationship from many of your perspectives.  I'm very interested in hearing from the moms out there.  To me, their relationship was very believable and honest.  I did think the breast feeding was a little too much in the forefront, but like I said, I'm a guy and have never had kids.

One thing I'd like to hear discussion on is the attempted suicide.  I understand her "survivor's guilt" and the stress of the media, but I don't think the author did her justice.  Here's a young woman of incredible strength, who lived 24 hours a day for 5 years, with her son as her focal point.  She made him exercise, limited TV, read to him; they were the world to each other.  I think it was a disservice to her to have this in the book.

Sorry if this is too long, or a disjointed review.  I'm looking forward to reading other's viewpoints.

Byron

Fantastic post, Keri, and wanted to echo a lot of what you said so I re-quoted and bolded those bits ...

I'm glad I read it, and I thought it was an excellent choice for a book club (THANK YOU HELEN!!!) ... but I hated the book.

Nevertheless, there were some things I thought were written very well, or at least were interesting.

-          I actually appreciated the monotony of the first part of the book. While Jack seems fine with it, it’s pretty clever (of the author) that I was able to perceive Ma’s boredom with it and her struggle to keep normalcy and variety for Jack and herself. I think the horror of their situation … the gray, suffocating sameness of it all for Ma … comes through really well with how much the book seemingly “dragged on” in the first part.

-          Once “Outside”, I really “got” the contrast between Ma’s (sorry, I forgot her name! don’t have book with me here in Jakarta) viewpoint of Room as a tomb/prison and Jack’s of Room as home. I also thought their reactions to being Outside were very believable and heart-rending … Jack is understandably overwhelmed, but still has the plasticity of a little kid and does okay while being very homesick for Room, ritual, and the relationship he and Ma had. She, on the other hand, has overwhelmingly (and to her, unexpected) conflicting emotions—tremendous relief, dealing with what we’d call PTSD, that Outside wasn’t entirely what she expected and that just being Outside wouldn’t heal the trauma and profound depressive episodes she experienced, wanting some independence from Jack but being fiercely protective of him … again, really didn’t care for the manner of storytelling, but beyond this, I thought the portrayal of the nature of these perspectives were done well.

I still think it's very arresting to speak in the voice of a child in these circumstances, and I applaud Emma Donoghue for it. I just don't think it worked very well. I always felt jarred reading because it just didn't ring true to me. I never did get taken in by the storytelling and that's a major reason I hated the book.

Other than the disjunctures in narrative, there were a lot of “plot holes” I couldn’t quite buy (all occurring during escape and outside), either. A few examples:

-          Sure, Old Nick is psycho, but he wouldn’t CHECK that Jack was dead?

-          As horrendous as the room was, I can’t quite fathom, in the chaos after escape, that Ma, with her profoundly protective instincts for Jack, wouldn’t try to keep more routine, since she so cleverly identified and clung to that as salvation for him (and likely herself). Then again, she’s really been through the wringer—to put it mildly—and I can buy that. What I can’t buy is that the clinic staff wouldn’t advise her to keep as much of the routine as possible—that’s kind of Kid 101, no? And that’s just taking a family holiday, much less going through arguably one of the most extreme kind of changes a kid might.

-          They’d let Jack out of the clinic when Ma tried to kill herself? I don’t buy that for a minute …

-          I don’t know that I’d buy she’d try to kill herself. Maybe. Again, “wringer.” But the fact that I’m stumbling over so many plot points to feel like I have to accept them, rather than that they flow or are believable at face value, is a problem to me.

There have been several real-world cases of something like this happening, most notably Jaycee Dugard, kidnapped at 12 and rescued at 30 (I think), who bore children by her captor at age 15 and 18. There was also the case in Austria (Fritzl) of the girl whose father kept her in a basement and I believe she had four children by him. Many details of these cases have been successfully kept from the general public, but it'd be fascinating to be able to compare them with the perspective of Room.

Okay, that’s all I have to say about all that … for now.

Good point on 2, Brad. There are actually a number of 'hot button' social issues that are brought up in the book--rape, abortion, breastfeeding, drug use (Ma says drugs rot your brain, and she judges Steppa for it, but from Jack's perspective, he's a wonderful grandfather, in foil to his original grandfather, who has extreme difficulty in accepting him because he is the product of his daughter's rape).

Interesting comments so far.......

I agree that there were many parts of the book that perhaps did not "ring true". This did not particularly bother me. I do necessarily need reality in a book. Things do not need to be plausible........

What I look for in a book is it's ability to make me think and stir my emotions. Room did that for me. 

I could not get this fact out of my head as I read this book........that this horrific situation had happened numerous times in the past. Shudder.

Agree Brad - I have a friend who is an amazing person and Mother, she is the product of rape, is so very glad she was born, her Mother kept her and she has a beautiful life.

I would be interesting to know why Ma was given up. What if she was the product of rape?

I was also disappointed in her suicide attempt and glad she recovered. In *my* mind she was tired, so very tired of everything and overwhelmed and wanted the world to STOP. Not sure she really wanted to die, but at that moment she wanted to escape.

I agree there is no way they would have let Jack out of the clinic but doing so allowed him to 'grow' a bit faster and show us how he would do with peers which we would not have seen if he stayed in the clinic.

When Ma was telling Nick 'don't you look at him, I'll know it' or whatever she said I kept thinking 'you need to shut up or you are going to give this whole thing away'. I understand thinking Nick probably would have looked to make sure he was dead but in all honesty I think he was glad to be rid of the boy and didn't care enough to look. Now he would have to buy less food etc. Obviously Nick is socially awkward and doesn't make connections with people so he wouldn't think the way most folks would. I mean he never tried to look at Jack when he was alive - he could have opened the wardrobe at any time.

Somebody mentioned how Ma had a hard time with Steppa smelling like pot while she OD'd on pain killers. I honestly see this in my own family. I have a sister addicted to prescription drugs but she doesn't see it like that and admonishes other people who smoke pot or drink in excess. I think this was another one of those social points made in the book.

Most of the time, I will give authors a pretty wide berth of "poetic license," so to speak. It's just when the credibility gets begged over and over again that it gets annoying. A lot of us have brought up points like "I don't buy this" or "this seems unlikely" and of course there are ways to explain it away, or that the author 'needed' to do so in order to move another element along.

Good authors don't have to do that. Their plots run believably and readers aren't always having to 'explain' away the disconnect. It takes away from the novel. Done seamlessly (so that in fact, the readers aren't conscious of it), it magnifies the remainder of the content.

The author needs to be manipulating us. Not us manipulating her writing so that it can 'work' for us as readers. It's too bad, because, as I said, there's an awful lot of really 'good' or genuinely provocative content.

It's almost like this book didn't get edited, nor was it well-researched in terms of child development and psychology, for starters.

I think you bring up some good points. Have you read any of the authors other books?  Is this her general style?  I would classify this book as a "vacation page turner", one that gets you on an emotional level more than a mental level.

haven't read it but heard her earlier book Slammerkin is much better in terms of narrative continuity and literary merit overall. I actually appreciated the provocative elements of Room enough to at least give Slammerkin a try.

I agree with the 'vacation page turner' although at least for the ideas, some pretty deep and difficult attempts/risks, I'd rate it more toward the top of that list. Obviously I didn't like it, but it sure beats beach reads like the Da Vinci Code (although that was much better researched!).

Good point Yanti.

I was more able to let thingds slide, as I mentioned before, but Ma's suicide attempt did bother me tremendously. It did not fit........

Actually I’m quite surprise by some of the criticism that this book has gotten.

When a book is overanalyzed faults to the logic of events and actions can always be found.  I don’t think that the author  “offended” anyone’s intelligence by presenting something that cannot be explained.

Mother and Son spent a lot of years isolated from the real word, under circumstances that are hardly normal, so it is to be expected for them to act in a way that for most doesn’t make sense and react differently.  I think I would have a bigger problem if all ends were neatly tied up.

In regards to the suicide not fitting, it never does, not in real life or fiction.  Most of the time reasons are not clear and cannot be explained, and this is no different.

I enjoyed the book, and one of the reasons I did it is because it was unorthodox.

OK let's put ourselves in Ma's tragic shoes for a moment.......

What did you think of her decision to let Jack believe that the entire world outside Room was just fantasy?

What would YOU have done in her place? 

Do you think it was a good idea? 

Or should she have tried a different approach?

Very true......

I would have thought that there would have been more warning signs that she was going down that road, but in reality there are often NO signs. 

This spring , we had two cases of teenage suicide in my town. These were not troubled kids....I mean obviously they WERE, but in both cases the suicides came seemingly out of the blue. So terribly tragic. 

Those questions are quite difficult to answer, i can not even imagine how she felt after all those years in that room without contact with the real world, only with her "warden" and to be abused.

Making Jack believe that i think it was the easiest and most simple alternative under the circumstances.  I honestly have no idea what i would have done differently

Good questions! And I'll remind everyone that I don't have kids.  I think it was somewhat "defeatist" to teach Jack that outside the room was fantasy.  Defeatist, in that Ma felt she would never get out.  Maybe she was waiting until Jack got older to tell him?  We don't know.

To the parents out there, how do you teach your kids something abstract like religion?  I know a lot of kids under 5 are taught about religion, and there's no tangible evidence for them.  Jack was taught about "baby Jesus" easily enough, it seems like Ma could have taught him about outside.

Would it be too hard for her to admit the were stuck in the room?  Maybe.  I think many parents have to explain to their children that they are "stuck" in an economic situation.  "Sorry Jack, Ma can't afford that", or "Those people on TV have those nice homes and all those cars because they're movie stars".

Looking forward to reading other's insights...

Byron

OK let's put ourselves in Ma's tragic shoes for a moment.......

What did you think of her decision to let Jack believe that the entire world outside Room was just fantasy?

What would YOU have done in her place?  I think for my own sanity I would have had to talk about the outside world, especially family.

Do you think it was a good idea? I can see why she did this. I really think she had given up. She obviously made some attempts in the early years and she was trying to protect both of them.

Or should she have tried a different approach? I only wish she had given him more time to adjust to there being a real outside world before their escape. It seems once she realized he was too young to keep in the 'dark' they needed to escape right then. I wish she had planned this out better to make the transition a bit easier for Jack.

Religion is different because we can show our kids some things that are tangible. For instance Jack had pictures of Mary & Jesus and maybe a picture of John the Baptist and Jesus? Can't remember that one for sure. So she had something tangible to show him. She didn't have a picture of her family to show him. I can show my children the Bible, take them to Mass etc. so it's not completely imaginary/abstract. I think it would be MUCH harder to explain religion without something tangible.

I actually liked that Ma had this romantic picture of her family in her head and when she got out realized she had problems with her Mom before and obviously her Mom is still her Mom not some perfect imaginary woman she had been remembering all those years.