Rants/Raves: Room

Happy Hump Day everyone! I haven't done a rant/rave in a while so I'm excited to share my opinion a book I had just finished recently, Room by Emma Donoghue. 

I have been meaning to read this book for sometime after my Grade 12 English teacher had recommended this book to me. Since I was one of the very few students he had who actually read leisurely we enjoyed giving each other book recommendations and this is the one he had for me. I had searched for it in the library, and asked friends if they had owned it (I'm frugal I tend not to buy books if I don't need to) so I had kind of slacked on actually being able to read this book. I was in Jasper where I finally decided to let go of my frugal ways and buy the book since I would need something to read anyways when I was flying back to Ontario.

This book is about a woman who had been kidnapped and locked into a room when she was 19. The woman was raped numerous amount of times by the man who had kidnapped her which resulted in her giving birth to a boy named Jack. The story's narrator is the five year old son Jack where he talks about life in the Room with Ma. I thought having the book narrated by the 5 year old was extremely clever and she did an incredible job with having you actually believe it was a five year old talking (bad grammar, how he would ask questions, behaviour). It was an emotional, funny and thrilling book. For Jack's first 5 years of his life, he had not been outside, all he had known was this Room. His only human friend was his Ma, but he had made friends with Rug, Wardrobe, TV, Mouse. The author would give proper nouns to objects because to Jack they were his actual friends, he had become friends with objects since he had no human contact other than with his Ma. I thought the author executed the book very well, my only criticism of the book was that the climax of the story was in the dead middle of the book instead of nearing the end of the book which I probably would have preferred and would have been kept more interested in. Other than that, I would strongly recommend reading this novel. 

I was surprised to see that the author Emma Donoghue actually lives in my hometown of London, Ontario. I always get really excited when I hear people are from/live in my hometown (Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, etc). She is an extremely talented author and I'm excited to read more of her books.

What books have you read recently?