The Room by Emma Donoghue is the first book I read in 2013. A story of a girl kidnapped and forced to live in a Room. The girl aged 19 when she was kidnapped and now after 7 years has a son, Jack, aged 5 at the time the story starts. Jack has never seen the outside of the Room. The Room is his world. The TV in the Room is his only window to the Outside world, however because it is TV, he believes all that is shown on TV is unreal and everything else (meaning in the Room) is real. The story is narrated as a first person account of Jack. How he views his Room. How he connects with each and every object in the Room. The regime his Maa formulated for him, so that she can do her best for the kid as he grows up captive but hardly realizing that he is in captivity. The innocence of the child under the circumstances is stirring and troubling. The spirit of Maa who never gives up, as now she has her son to care for, shines like a beacon in the darkness of captivity.
Jack and his Maa are able to fashion their escape from the Room, not before some out-of-the-world heroics by Jack. Imagining the things Jack pulls off for somebody who has ventured out of his shell for the first time is both magical and satisfying. Though the real challenge for Maa and Jack lies in trying to adjust to a world which Maa was forced to leave behind 7 years ago and Jack has never known existed. What follows are a series of re-acquaintances with family and friends. For Jack, even the sun and the wind are too much to bear. Slowly but surely with the same will they displayed in the Room, they start gelling with the outside world. Not to mention that there are a couple of scares along the way.
The most touching narration of the novel is arguably at the very end, where Jack asks his Maa to visit the Room one last time. While inside it, he touches each and every object and says a heartfelt 'Bye-Bye' to them. The conflict which Jack feels at time about returning to the Room because he is so used to being in it finally ends and he is ready to live his life in the Outside. There is a passage where Maa goes on to say that everybody is captive in his/her Room. There are so many innocents who are behind bars, which gives the narration a totally different spin and does make the reader wonder.
For me personally, the innocence of the 5 year old Jack was killing to say the least. There were times, where I had to keep the book aside at regular intervals just to reflect as to what exactly could be going in that tiny 5 yr old brain of his, when everything he ever knows about is confined in that Room. Though the author does a very good job to end it on a very hopeful note and I am thankful for that. It would have been utterly devastating for me to think of anymore sadness for Maa and Jack.
I must confess that I did take a little more than a week just to get over this read. It is a simple read, what with a 5yr old narrating it. But then you know how a child can say so much more with a handful of words!!!
Next read : The Book Thief : Mark Zusak
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