Room, by Emma Donoghue

A frustrating aspect of this blog is not being able to easily search for a title to see what others have posted about a book you've just read -- and I know I am late in coming to this book, which several people recommended. I was having trouble with the concept, as one is supposed to, I guess, of the narrator being a five-year-old confined his entire life to a single room with his mother. Although I must say, I thought the novel was about her confining him, like the true story not long ago in this area, rather than of her being a victim as well. Having picked the book up, I put it down only when I had to and finished it in record time. Jack is destined to be a voice that will be resonate for years, like Holden and Huck and Scout's voices do. Ma herself is not long out of childhood when she is abducted and sealed away for her kidnapper's use. Her coping mechanisms allow her to raise her son (her second child, a daughter having been born dead when the cord wrapped around her neck during the unattended birth) to live within his confinement and almost thrive in it. Just how difficult it is for her to keep it all together, with an occasional descent into a day or two of being "gone," when she retreats into an almost catatonic state, is obvious in the second part of the book when they have escaped from their tormentor. For her, it is a return the world and people she has known and a media nightmare. With Jack safe, she allows herself to succumb the despair that she has fought for years. For Jack, who as not even developed the ability to see distances, his eyes having never focused further away than a few feet, it is a strange, overwhelming, magical, and often terrifying world. That he is able to begin to integrate into the larger world is a testimony to his own inner strengths and the foundation his mother's fierce, protective love has given him. A unique and fascinating tale with much to teach us. 321 pp.