Everyone has been raving about Emma Donoghue’s book, the movie is up for a bunch of Oscars, and Book Riot challenged me to read a book, watch the movie, and discuss which is better, so I felt the pressure to read this one.
When I first read the synopsis of this book, I really had no desire to read it. It wasn’t until I saw a clip of the movie and really realized what it was about that I thought I might want to read it anyway.
I didn’t really like it.
That said, I have to give credit where credit is due because it’s still a very well-written book. It’s about a woman who was kidnapped at nineteen and has been held captive in this man’s shed for seven years. He rapes her regularly and the product of one of those awful nights was her son, whom she named Jack and loves more than anything in the world.
The book starts on Jack’s fifth birthday and the entire book is written from his perspective. It’s certainly an interesting choice to tell such a horrific story from the point of view of someone who doesn’t even realize that his situation is out of the ordinary. When his mom (he calls her Ma, and we never learn her name in the book), comes up with a plan for them to escape, Jack has to do most of the work in executing the plan. He’s fine with practicing what he has to do, but when it comes time to do it for real, he’s scared and not all that motivated to leave the only life he’s ever known.
But Ma convinces him to let her roll him up in their rug and play dead so their captor (whom they call “Old Nick”) will take him outside and put him in his pickup truck. She tells Jack to unroll himself out of the rug and jump out of the truck when it comes to a stop sign (she explains what that will feel like, so he can understand). When Old Nick comes, she tells him not to just bury Jack’s body in the back yard, but to find someplace nice for him. Apparently Old Nick isn’t totally heartless because he agrees, throws his son in the back of his pickup truck, and drives off.
It takes Jack a little longer than planned to unroll himself, but he manages it. Old Nick sees him, runs after him, and catches him, but by then a passerby has already seen them, gotten suspicious, and called the police. Old Nick drops Jack and makes a run for it.
I think this particular scene was better done in the book than the movie. Obviously, it’s easier to get a feel for what’s going on when you’re in the kid’s head, but it was still unclear as to exactly why Old Nick dropped Jack and left him there. He had the boy and all he had to do was throw him back in his truck. The stranger did not say anything about calling the police in the movie so it seemed more like dumb luck than anything else that Old Nick decided to drop Jack.
Old Nick has never hurt Jack before this, but Jack is still afraid of him, and he’s never actually spoken to anyone other than his mother, so when people ask him questions, he has a hard time responding. With the help of a patient police officer, he manages to convey the situation and provide clues as to where his mother might be. That was also better done in the book than the movie.
That’s only half way through the story. After that they have to deal with trying to adjust to the real world, avoiding the paparazzi, and dealing with their PTSD. They had a TV in their shed, so they have some idea of what’s going on in the world, but actually being out in it and dealing with all the changes is another story.
For the first five years of his life Jack literally thought their Room was the whole world. He doesn’t know where Old Nick goes when he’s not in the Room. He thinks everything on TV is fake and his mom has to explain to him that what he sees on TV is pictures of the real world. That there really is grass and trees and airplanes and mountains and oceans and lots and lots of other people, just like them. It’s a lot for any five-year-old to try to process, much less one who has spent his entire life in one room.
The other advantage to writing the story from the boy’s POV is Donoghue gets to show the world through the perspective of a child, which is always refreshing. Despite struggling to understand the difference between Outside (as in outside Room) and outside (as in outside any building), different rooms, different functions for different rooms, stairs, etc., Jack also has the insight of a child. My favorites are probably his observations that everyone in the world seems very busy and rushed (even his retired grandparents) and that adults don’t seem to like kids because he never sees them playing with kids.
Despite the advantages of telling the story from this perspective, the writing style got on my nerves after a while. It’s as simplistic as if a five-year-old is really relating all this to the reader, which annoyed me pretty quickly. Fortunately, the book is not very long and it’s a pretty quick read.
What did you guys read this week? Anything else that’s been raved about? I want to hear all about it!