Room in Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge

Sep 09, 2014 Krissy rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-before-2015, audiobook, pgs-300-399, abuse, cover-color-white, cover-text-only

This was told in the first person POV of a five year old and I had a difficult time fully enjoying the story when most of the time I was annoyed with said five year old. Jack tended to be a little bratty, whiney, and annoying. I know I was supposed to feel sympathy towards him for how he had to live his life up until that point. And that he just didn't know any better but I couldn't stir up any sympathy. He was just too irritating. Maybe I would have looked at him differently if the story wasn't ...more

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Oct 22, 2010 Linda rated it it was amazing

AWESOME BOOK!!! I fell in love with Jack, a five-year-old boy who has lived in "Room" since birth and knows nothing of the outside world. His Ma has tried to make their life together in Room seem fun and exciting, but for her it is a prison she cannot escape. When the time is right to plan an escape, Jack has to be the hero. A story that is both heartbreaking and uplifting. Highly recommended. Especially for Moms :) ...more

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Aug 04, 2011 Larissa rated it really liked it

Wow - this was a very intriguing book and I read through it very fast as I wanted to know what was gong to happen! Very well done story. It was a great one to do on audio as the story is told by 5 year old Jack and a kids voice tells the story on audio book. Jack and his "Ma" live in Room and are held captive there. Most of the things in the room have their noun for their names. For example, the chair is Chair and the bed is Bed. In Room there is Wardrobe where Jack sleeps when "Old Nick" (their ...more

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Mar 08, 2011 Leslie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011-reads, audio-books

This is more of a review of the audio version of the book rather than the book itself. Listening to a five year old (or rather, a voice actress playing a five year old, I'm sure) narrate a book was grating at first, and I was thinking that maybe I should have read the print version instead. However, once I got used to it I didn't mind so much, and I do think that the voice actress did a really good job sounding like a realistic five year old. Actually, after reading a couple of excerpts from the ...more

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Jan 31, 2011 Christine rated it really liked it

I have very mixed feelings about this book. Let me start by saying that I usually don't like books that are narrated by a child, but Jack's character was very well thought out and actually the author did a very job of keeping the story honest by having him narrate. The other aspect that I liked by having the story told through Jack's point of view is that it helped keep the disturbing parts of the story at bay. It's easier to deal with the horrific things that were happening when you hear them d ...more

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Aug 24, 2014 Kristin rated it really liked it

Although a work of fiction, Donoghue's 'Room' gives a voice to a small population whose perspective on life is rarely considered, children born to women who have been held hostage by their captors. It seems like all too often recently, there have been news stories of missing teenage girls and women who have been found hidden in basements and secret rooms after many years, and frequently there has been a child born during that time in captivity. The women often talk about their ordeal, but the ch Although a work of fiction, Donoghue's 'Room' gives a voice to a small population whose perspective on life is rarely considered, children born to women who have been held hostage by their captors. It seems like all too often recently, there have been news stories of missing teenage girls and women who have been found hidden in basements and secret rooms after many years, and frequently there has been a child born during that time in captivity. The women often talk about their ordeal, but the children are rarely mentioned except anecdotally.
As the book opens, Jack is turning 5 in Room, the small space where he was born and has lived his whole life with Ma. Occasionally, Big Nick comes into Room at night, but Ma instructs Jack he is not to leave Wardrobe, where he sleeps under Ma's dresses, until Big Nick leaves and she comes to get him and they both sleep in Bed. Otherwise though, it's just the two of them, and, not knowing if they'll ever leave Room, Ma teaches Jack about everything in Room, but everything outside seems as two-dimensional and abstract as the pictures on Television. Therefore, Jack is mystified when a spider and a mouse both show up in Room, because to him, spiders and mice are just for pretend like Dora the Explorer. Ma, having lived outside, knows that the mouse especially is not something she wants in Room, but can't seem to find words to explain to Jack why not.
The whole book is told from Jack's perspective, and he narrates with a stronger vocabulary than one might expect a 5 year-old to have, until you consider that Ma has spent every day of the last 5 years with him, confined to a small room and needing to satisfy the curiosity of a little boy. They exercise by putting all the furniture up on Bed and running in circles, do arts and crafts and writing practice with limited resources like empty eggshells or toilet paper (which then gets re-rolled and used for its intended purpose), and learn from the few books they've received from Big Nick or from Television, when its signal isn't all fuzz. Of course, Ma is always thinking of ways to escape, but above all, she needs to protect Jack, even at the cost of her own well-being. It is often a tough task for her to write the weekly list of things for Big Nick to bring them, because while she needs things like painkillers for her abscessed teeth or bigger clothes for Jack, Jack longs for things like a new book or sweet treats, and there's no guarantee he'll bring anything from the list or may expect something extra from Ma in exchange for the items on her list.
'Room' depicts the events of daily life for Jack and Ma, which might sound boring, but Ma does her best to make each day interesting for Jack and his imagination. There is a deeper plot to the book, but to elaborate would provide major spoilers, and I enjoyed not knowing any of them and just letting the book flow on its own. I don't know how much of 'Room' was based on real-life experiences or if it was all a product of the author's imagination, but it did make me think about the innocent kids like Jack who know nothing about the world that exists beyond the walls they are trapped behind day after day. ...more

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Jan 07, 2013 Megan rated it really liked it

Shelves: american-stories, contemporary

I wasn't completely sold on reading this one (a book with a 5-year old narrator and a plot that involved some unspeakable act?!) but a couple of people recommended it, so I decided to take a chance. I had a hard time putting it down once I started reading it -- I wanted to know where this story was going, even though I feared it would be an incredibly dark place I really didn't want to visit. The decision to tell the story from the point of view of the 5-year old Jack was effective, rather than ...more

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Sep 13, 2010 Joanna rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks, rws-2010-winter, bookish-2011-winter, 2011-read

The reader for the unabridged audio version did a fantastic job of capturing Jack's voice as a strange five-year-old who, until midway through the book, has never been outside of Room. The story, told from Jack's perspective, is of a kidnapping and rape victim who is imprisoned in a reinforced garden shed and her son, Jack, who was born in the shed.

The imagining of the way Jack and his "Ma" spent their days in Room, the games and inside jokes they created, and the way Ma shaped Jack's world for ...more

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Apr 08, 2011 Beth rated it it was amazing

I loved this! That little five year old boy felt so real to me, I missed him when the story was over. The plot is different and intriguing and very well done.

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