Book review: Room

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By Emma Donoghue
Published by Picador

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010, Room is a book that, regardless of any literary prize, will be remembered for a long time.

Little Jack and his Ma live in Room with Wardrobe, Rug and other various objects-cum-friends. They spend their time playing, singing, reading, exercising and watching a little television. At night, the person they named Old Nick comes to visit Ma and Jack goes to sleep in Wardrobe. Jack likes his world with the exception of those days when Ma doesn’t move from the bed, when she is “gone”.

Ma has also another name but Jack doesn’t know it. He is going to find it out soon though because Ma decided that she doesn’t want to live in Room anymore. She wants to live in Outside. Jack is not sure. There is Room and then there are the people in television. Now his Ma his saying that the things they see in television are real and he doesn’t really understand that. But he will have to. Soon.

Room makes you smile even when you almost want to cry. The boundaries between sadness and happiness are blurred. Horror and hope co-exist. It is one of those books that you will find yourself coming back to again and again.

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