Room

"Shortlist"

"It was. It was written off the back of the Fritzl case, the real-life story of a girl being trapped for years by her father, an abuser. We talk about ‘locked room mysteries.’ In a way, three of these, The Fury , And Then There Were None and The Secret History , because it’s a campus novel, are locked room mysteries. But you can’t get more of a locked room mystery than Room . It’s two protagonists in a 12-foot square locked room. It’s narrated from the perspective of five-year-old Jack. The voice that Emma Donoghue creates for Jack is so beautiful and yet horrifying at the same time. He is the product of a rape. His mother was kidnapped five years ago and has been kept in a room ever since. Jack has never seen the outside world. Everything he’s ever experienced has been in this tiny room. It’s a story of maternal devotion to the absolute nth degree. His mother, Ma, has created a whole world out of this single room that they live in. All the pieces of furniture have names and are given characters. She endlessly tells him stories and makes them exercise every day. It’s so tense because Nick, the abuser, comes to visit every few days, at which point Jack has to lock himself in a wardrobe. He doesn’t know what’s happening, but we do. That sense that these horrific things are taking place that we are seeing through his eyes and his naivety…it’s just so profoundly moving. Then there’s a point at which the mother wants the child to try and escape. The tension around that is just palpable and so beautifully done. Yes, how is he going to get out? Is it going to be given away before he manages to escape? Is he going to escape but something happens to the mother in the meantime? There is almost unbearable tension."

"Emma Donoghue's Room."

"I am going to finish Room, by Emma Donoghue — both very good, very different."

"I love books that leave me weeping inside. 'A Little Life,' by Hanya Yanagihara, 'Room,' by Emma Donoghue, 'Never Let Me Go,' by Kazuo Ishiguro, 'Beloved,' by Toni Morrison, and 'Sophie's Choice,' by William Styron, destroyed me in all the best ways."