Room

By: Emma Donoghue

Narrated by: Michal Friedman, Ellen Archer, Suzanne Toren, Robert Petkoff

Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

A major film starring Brie Larson.
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
Shortlisted for the Orange Prize.

Unsentimental and sometimes funny, devastating yet uplifting, Room by Emma Donoghue is a story of boundless maternal love. Read by a full cast of narrators.

Scared is what you're feeling. Brave is what you're doing.

Jack lives with his Ma in Room, which has a locked door and a skylight, and measures 11 feet by 11 feet. He loves watching TV, and the cartoon characters he calls friends, but he knows that nothing he sees on screen is truly real – only him, Ma and the things in Room. Until the day Ma admits that there’s a world outside . . .

Told in Jack’s voice, Room is the story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible...

Part of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature.

©2010 Emma Donoghue (P)2010 Hachette Audio US

Critic reviews

"Emma Donoghue's writing is superb alchemy, changing innocence into horror and horror into tenderness. Room is a book to read in one sitting. When it's over you look up: the world looks the same but you are somehow different and that feeling lingers for days." (Audrey Niffenegger)

" Room is one of the most profoundly affecting books I've read in a long time. Jack moved me greatly. His voice, his story, his innocence, his love for Ma combine to create something very unusual and, I think, something very important.... Room deserves to reach the widest possible audience." (John Boyne)

"I loved Room. Such incredible imagination, and dazzling use of language. And with all this, an entirely credible, endearing little boy. It's unlike anything I've ever read before." (Anita Shreve)

"I’ve never read a more heart-burstingly, gut wrenchingly compassionate novel . . . As for sweet, bright, funny Jack, I wanted to scoop him up out of the novel and never let him go. In him, Donoghue has created 21st-century fiction's most uniquely loveable voice. She deserves to win this year's Man Booker Prize." ( Daily Mail)

"extraordinary power of Donoghue's utterly gripping story which, although not essentially just hers, has never been told in such a way before." ( Mirror Book of the Week)

"In filling this book with things that are both truly horrific and rather lovely, Emma Donoghue has achieved a work that is deeply unsettling on every level. It is a strange paradox that a book about imprisonment and torture should have become an arena for discussing the proper care and love of children. I think I am glad to have read it." ( Financial Times)

"What saves this beautifully nuanced book from being in any way a voyeuristic reaction to true crime is less the descriptions of captivity than the inevitably changing nature of the child / parent relationship, which Donoghue explores here so minutely, recognisably and exultantly." ( Sunday Telegraph)

Not what it looks like

What disappointed you about Room?

The fact that I felt I had to read others approach to it in order to having a wish to keep coming. I waited and waited for the truth a.k.a. Their version of why they are in the room. It did not grab me, I did not hang on. The narration is amazing so they are not to blame.

Has Room turned you off from other books in this genre?

No: Because it is not a genre of it's own. It is fiction meets sci-fi-thriller but without an edge I could sit on.

Which character – as performed by the narrators – was your favorite?

Mom: What a brave lady!

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Confusion and longing for a tiny bit of background information. As for book-blogs I have read so amazingly great things about it. Sometimes, not being able to read books due to reduced vision

Because you can read at your own pace makes it easier to get through it. And therefore I think this might be a textbook not audio, it is very slow because it is read in the form of a conversation between a tired adult and a child thinking about his life.

I think this could be a great book if it was not so slow narrated even though the little boy is cute. I hope it comes in a regular edition read by Gabra Zackman. This version could then be called "the dramatised audio-verson" So why did I get this? People said if you like " The help" I was so disappointed. However: I hope I will get through it one day. maybe my friend can read the paperback edition in a normal tempo. I even waited listening to it after I heard "The end of your life book club" then I waited a few days until I heard another novel. So not to judge it on the basic of the amazing "The end of your life book club"

I even listened to a Christian book before hitting "The room" because unlike others I can t not read the text about the book. I base my opinion on the narration, that is if no friend can read about the book for me that is.

So I bought it based on recommendations in different blogs and emails-mails where I can enlarge the text. However I was not tempted by the clip, but since people said "Buy it" I did of course. I do not want to give up on this. Since people with my I am taste loves this book.

But I think you need to listen to the clip to see if you can stomach the style.

I reached the limits

I read this book. This book is about a kid and his ma. They live in a room. The room is small. The story is told by the kid. The sentences are short. The story is predictable – that is a big word for a five-year-old kid. They are trapped in the room. The kid does not know about the outside. Then one day he does. And then the rest of the book is about the outside. And then the kid discovers things like trees, and dogs, and showers, and nurses and then I simply could not control my bowels any more and stopped reading this pile of steaming ... I am not sure what happens in the second half of the book – maybe there are angels, Martians, heroes. I don’t know and I don’t care to find out. The writing became just too tedious to tolerate. Imagine reading an entire book written by a five-year-old. A wonderful experiment, maybe, but that is like having to eat the cooking experiments of a five year old – everyday, for every meal, for a long time. Sooner or later MacDonalds is going to win. The only positive thing is the narrator – the child is simply brilliant.