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Room

Emma Donoghue

Start date: May 1, 2017

Finish date: May 31, 2017

Discussion: Monthly Bonus Reads

Why we're reading this: May's Bonus Read for Mother's Day is Room by Emma Donoghue. …more
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What Members Thought

Mar 14, 2012 Richard Derus rated it did not like it

Shelves: pearl-ruled

Rating: 0.125* of five

I couldn't finish it. P88 or so, I said to myself, "Self," I said, "you are being manipulated, Self, and it feels so cynical and so heartless that even you, Self, cynical old heartless bastard that we are, can't stand it."

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. ...more

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Nov 18, 2012 Booknblues rated it really liked it

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, family-relationships, survival

With news of women who had been kidnap and held captive for years escaping with their children who had been born during captivity, Emma Donoghue wrote the novel Room. The reader is first introduced to the claustrophobic world of Ma and Jack in their tiny room when Jack turns five. We see that like all five year olds it is a big day for Jack.

During the first segment of the book, the reader cannot help but be impressed with the efforts of Ma to create some semblance of normality and routine for yo ...more

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Dec 21, 2012 Mom2triplets04 rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-on-my-kindle, 2011-womans-prize-shortlist, baileys-womans-prize

I've been meaning to read this for a while now. So glad I finally decided to go the audio way. The story is told by a 5 year old boy named Jack who lives with his mother. They were kidnapped and are trapped in a small room. Jack is extremely smart and asks a lot of questions which can become a bit annoying. It's a heartfelt story about their survival in the room, their escape and surviving the real world afterwards. ...more

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Mar 29, 2015 ceeeeg rated it it was amazing

ok so...wow!

i rarely give a book a 5 star rating....usually reserve those for books i will probably revisit because they were so amazing, which is a relatively rare occurrence...

this is an even rarer event, giving out a top rating to a book i will likely never read again....

this was such a heartbreaking, terror striking, hopeful piece of work...its so unusual i find it hard to put into words how i felt about it as i made my way through...

initially, i found the narration odd, but i quickly overca ok so...wow!

i rarely give a book a 5 star rating....usually reserve those for books i will probably revisit because they were so amazing, which is a relatively rare occurrence...

this is an even rarer event, giving out a top rating to a book i will likely never read again....

this was such a heartbreaking, terror striking, hopeful piece of work...its so unusual i find it hard to put into words how i felt about it as i made my way through...

initially, i found the narration odd, but i quickly overcame my struggle on that score...i have a great appreciation for the unusual so it grabbed me on that tip pretty quickly once i got used to it, even enjoyed it...as a parent and grandparent, i found Jack's 'voice' very authentic and touching and insightful...

Ma too...i thought the author really did well capturing the fear, anger, frustration and all encompassing love her character experiences...it rang true for me...

what i found a lil harder to manage, also from a parental perspective, was the really horrifying track of the story's general subject matter...however, while it did make me feel mildly disturbed and squirmy, i thought the author was downright brilliant about how she presented it, limiting the inclusion of the antagonist to brief if palpable moments that provided the necessary context for Ma and Jack and their development

i can see how folks might be disappointed in the ending, but i felt it spoke to the reality that in such a situation, there comes a point where you simply must step forward into a brave new world without knowing where that step might lead, so i felt the end was fitting...a sequel to this would be an interesting read, say picking up in 10 or 20 years, to find out what became of everyone, but i am glad the author did not attempt to fit it in here...i think it would have been akin to letting X-Files go from great to overplayed...sometimes you just have to know when to put the period on the end of the sentence (obviously something i am not terribly skilled at...lol)

my final assessment was that this is a really beautiful story, but not always an easy read...

and that is my 2cents...

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