Room
I have given up, half way or three quarters of the way through both of the books I've started recently. I am not sure entirely why. I started each with the best intentions, having heard good things about each. But though I kept picking them up and migrating them with me around the apartment (from the couch to the table to the bedside stand and back again) neither book hooked me. I don't like to give up on books, but life is short and I'll never have the time to read everything I want to, and especially if I waste some of it on books that are taking me no where.
So yesterday, when I found myself downtown Ithaca I decided to stop at a used bookstore. It was raining and I had to be careful to tie up my wet umbrella as I entered and I was fiddling with it as I wandered toward the fiction shelves. And when I looked up, there was a yellow book spine reading ROOM.
I've been hearing a lot about Emma Donoghue's Room on Twitter and literary bookish blogs since it was put on the short list for the Man Booker and The Nervous Breakdown selected it for its bookclub. I knew it had just come out and wasn't sure, for a moment, how it was possible that I was finding it used. Of course what I found was an advanced copy, complete with typos and notes left in the margins by whoever passed it along. When I took it to the cashier he smiled at my choice and said, "I've been wondering when someone was gonna pick that up." As I left I snapped open my umbrella with purpose. My afternoon activity was decided.
On the front page of the book's beautiful website (which I had been clicking through a couple days ago) is a blurb from Audrey Niffenegger. "Room is a book to be read in one sitting. When it's over you look up: the world looks the same but you are somehow different and that feeling lasts for days." It's fitting, and exactly the way I felt yesterday, after I spent the evening reading. The first thirty or so pages are compulsively readable. After feeling as though I had to drag myself through my previous two book attempts it felt remarkably good to settle into a book. Jeff had come home and gone to the gym and come home again and I stayed on the couch. It is a rare and special book that gets me to read the way I did as a kid (for hours, lost to the world). Room is just such a book.
(Spoilers and discussion of plot elements below!)
Room is narrated by Jack, a five year old boy who lives in a small room with his mother. Though it takes time within the book for Jack to discover, their lives in Room are a result of Old Nick, a man who is keeping them prisoner. In her excellent NYT Book Review Aimee Bender calls Jack's voice "one of the pure triumphs of the novel." I couldn't agree more. As the book begins, in those first thirty or so pages, the reader slips in to Jack's world almost seamlessly. I say almost because I found it impossible to let go of my adult knowledge as I began to see things through Jack's eye. There is a keen sense of something being wrong, and I watched Ma (as Jack calls his mother) as closely as Jack did, though of course my reasons were different. Donoghue is both subtle and careful with her details. When Jack asks Ma about the future, for example, Donaghue lets Jack observe his mother's pause, the action on her face that shows the pain his question invokes without Jack's knowledge. (In fact, that sentence is far less eloquent than any of Donoghue's.)
Then, nearing the half way mark, the book got scary. A few times I had to set it down and go to the bathroom, just so I could take a deep breath and look at myself in the mirror and remind myself that it was only a book. When I returned I had to pick it up again and remind myself to go slow, I was so anxious to know how and if Ma's plan to escape would work. Because Jeff had gone out to meet a few friends I was alone in the apartment and every few minutes I'd take a deep breath and mutter ohmygod ohmygod. And (hey! I'm serious about the spoilers!) when Jack makes it out and the police return to free Ma I jumped from my spot on the couch and blinked hard to clear the tears from my eyes. I wasn't sure who I wanted to hug more at that moment, Jack, Ma or Emma Donaghue.
The beginning of the book, the half that takes place in Room, before Jack and Ma escape to Outside, is an exercise in voice and observation and defining reality. Jack has a lot of questions about what is real and what is just TV, which is how Ma has separated the world for him. The second half of the book becomes something much more complicated and uncomfortable. In Room, Jack and Ma are united. Jack, in fact, can hardly tell they are separate people. But Outside, there are dozens, hundreds, thousands of people who can come between them and affect their lives and their relationship. Watching Ma adjust was confusing and scary and there were moments when she acted nearly cold toward Jack or failed to explain when I felt she should. Yet, even at the moment I was judging her I felt embarrassed, and as if I were somehow letting Jack down with my doubts.
Ultimately, Room is the kind of book that is always two things at once. It is simple and complicated. It is layered and suspensful. It is a contained universe and yet references a long literary history.
It is not to be missed.
Friday, September 17, 2010 at 2:03PM | margosita | 5 Comments | Share Article tagged novels in reading
Reader Comments (5)
ok I'm sold. I'm buying it on kindle when I get home and taking it away to my get away weekend with kamel.... or maybe i should wait until there is a time when I can ignore him guilt free.
I didn't want to read the spoiler so I skipped down :)
It is rare that I sit down and read a book for hours anymore so that is already a huge recommendation!
I think you both will love it, Lauren and Jessie! But, Lauren, yes, you may want to wait until you can ignore him guilt free. Or just be prepared to be thinking about it even when you're not reading!
I bought this book last weekend on your blog's recommendation and I couldn't put it down! I took it on vacation this weekend. We flew to Salt Lake City for a wedding, and I carried it everywhere! I think my boyfriend was going to kill me when I took it in the car to the ceremony...but I had to find out what happened! Thanks for the recommendation! Freedom is next on my list...hopefully it pulls me in as quickly as Room did!
Oh, yay, Rachele! I'm so glad you picked it up and enjoyed it. I'd love to know what you think about Freedom, when you're finished!