Room

Author: Emma Donoghue

Rating: ⭐ 2/5

Date Read: 2013/12/12

Pages: 321

Ugh, this book. It sounds pretty interesting, right? A mother and child are held captive in a room, which is the only place the poor child has ever known. The story is told from his perspective. But, you know what? Sometimes people with interesting ideas are terrible, terrible writers. If Stephen King had written this, it probably would have been terrifying and compelling and awesome (not that I think of King as, like, a paragon of good writing, but he’s about ten thousand times more capable than Donoghue).

Here’s the thing that bothered me: the child narrator is question is not believable as a child, or as a narrator, or even really as a human. He makes errors in speech that no child would make, typically developing or otherwise, but then he is somehow capable of reading Alice and Wonderland and talking about how things are agonizing. I think Donoghue was trying to make the kid sound realistic, but she really just made him sound like a full-grown adult trying to write like a child. And there’s over three hundred pages of his narration. Seriously. That’s three hours of my life that I’ll never get back.

But, if that wasn’t enough, there’s all sorts of preachiness about Jesus, and heaven and faith. Also, weird moralistic lessons about living with less, which felt out of place because we probably shouldn’t try to live as if we’ve been stuck in a shed with only the barest essentials for seven freaking years. The only positive thing I can say is that it’s slightly better than Divergent, but it’s definitely worse than anything else I’ve read this year. Now if you excuse me, I’m going to go read some Calvino in an attempt to wash the bad taste of this book out of my brain.