Book Review: Room by Emma Donoghue

Genre: Fiction/Contemporary | My rating: 4 out of 5 ⭐️

Date read: July 21, 2022 - August 2, 2022

I got this book in 2016 and only started/finished reading now, 6 years after. I got interested with this book back then because of the movie adaptation. I wanted to read the book first. I haven’t seen the movie until now.

Coincidentally, this was the book I was reading when we tested positive for COVID and had to be in isolation. I wanted to take a break from this book because it felt like I was reading our current life story — oh the misery! Jack even described the feeling perfectly:

“Even after the nap I’m still tired. My nose keeps dripping and my eyes too, like they’re melting inside. Ma says I’ve picked up my first cold, that’s all.”

Now, how do I start with this book? A few pages in and I was so weirded out by it. This little boy Jack, who just turned five, is the narrator of the story and he pieces words together that seems incoherent (for me) and using all the wrong grammar and wrong tenses — intentionally of course. I eventually understood the story but it took quite a long time, a lot of pages!

There were many moments I wanted to give up on the book. Honestly, there were too many prolonged stories or conversations. I finished it though. And here are my realizations:

• Things or events were explained in a way we wouldn’t have explained it since we assume everyone knows. It’s like we’re relearning together with Jack.
• Jack is a child who does not want mercy, who have lived in the worst conditions but does not see it that way. Like in real life, we don’t know we’re suffering if that’s the only condition we’ve only been familiar with. Until we see the Outside.
• Prolonging the reading is meant to make you feel the prolonged agony that Jack and Ma have experienced. It’s meant to make you feel.
• We have to keep living. With the time that we have and the limited resources that we are given.

“I’m being scave but a bit more brave than scared…”

Would I recommend this? Yes! Give this book a chance. And be patient.

Below quotes & highlights are possible spoilers. Stop reading if you want your time with the book.

Quotes & Highlights From the Book

“Vitamins are medicine for not getting sick and going back to Heaven yet. I never want to go, I don’t like dying but Ma says it might be OK when we’re a hundred and tired of playing. Also she takes a killer. Sometimes she takes two, never more than two, because some things are good for us but too much is suddenly bad.”

“Lunch is bean salad, my second worst favorite. After nap we do Scream every day but not Saturdays or Sundays. We clear our throats and climb up on Table to be nearer Skylight, holding hands not to fall… Today I’m the most loudest ever because my lungs are stretching from being five.”

“Listen. What we see on TV is… it’s pictures of real things.” That’s the most astonishing I ever heard.

“Don’t worry about it.” She keeps saying that but I don’t know to not worry.

“Great idea. Choose some you want to keep,” Ma tells me. “How many?” “As many as you like.”

“In the world I notice persons are nearly always stressed and have no time. Even Grandma often says that, but she and Steppa don’t have jobs, so I don’t know how persons with jobs do the jobs and all the living as well. In Room me and Ma had time for everything. I guess the time gets spread very thin like butter over all the world, the roads and houses and playgrounds and stores, so there’s only a little smear of time on each place, then everyone has to hurry on to the next bit.”

“How is it home if I’ve never been here?”