Room by Emma Donoghue
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book was truly excellent and very well researched. Check out the website for insight into the author’s research: http://roomthebook.com.
I would recommend this book to writers because of how well written it was – there’s a lot to learn from every angle.
Being written from a five year old’s perspective was something unusual, and a very careful choice on the part of the author. She did a great job with it, and I think she chose that perspective very well. Any other perspective would have been too heavy handed.
While the content can be disturbing at times, I thought Donoghue handled it in a way that was straight forward but not gratuitous. It could have been much more graphic and hard to sit through, but she chose to make it more accessible – a choice that made a big difference as to its likeability.
I gave this four stars instead of five because I felt the author’s commitment wane towards the end, not expanding on things she would have had it come earlier in the book. I don’t like when it seems as if the author got tired of writing at the end. I also thought some of the things Ma did were unrealistic although optimistic, like doing a sort of gym class with Jack every day and coming up with endless activities all day long to keep him busy and happy and pretend like everything is perfectly normal. But then again, I haven’t done the research to prove whether all that is likely or unlikely to happen.