This was the first of my Man Booker Shadowing Group reads and as such I am looking at it from a dual perspective: as to whether I judge it worthy of the 2010 award and if it works as a novel.

I feel 'Room' could herald a new sub-genre - the fictional equivalent of the Misery Memoir - MizFic. Oh dear.

It felt much more suited to being chosen for the Oprah Book Club than on the shortlist for a literary prize of this calibre. It is literary chiclit appealing to sentiment and at times it really milks it. I'm pretty immune to that sort of thing.

In its own terms it does work as a work of popular fiction. There is nothing wrong with chicklit - literary or otherwise - it just isn't something that appeals to me. Like many people I found this hard to put down because I wanted to know what happened.

Yet I did not really feel that Jack, just having turned 5, really could have had the level of comprehension expressed within the novel. Thus, I found some bits felt very much the kind of rambling consciousness of a child of this age but plenty of the book felt as if it were an adult perspective. Can a 4/5 year old really understand the concept of sarcasm? Not in my experience or that of friends who have raised kids.

I feel that if she had tackled it as other authors have as an older child/teen looking back and recalling their earlier memories it might have rung more true.