'Room' – Emma Donoghue: Emotional, inspirational and a presentation of love.

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, Emma Donoghue’s seventh novel tells the story of a mother and her son held captive in an eleven-by-eleven foot shed, known to them as 'Room'. We witness their day-to-day routine as they stick to the carefully structured activities that make up their restricted world.

What’s unusual about this novel is that it is told from the point of view of the son, Jack, a five year old boy who has never seen the outside world and who isn’t really aware that there is a world outside of Room.

The story starts on the morning of Jack’s fifth birthday as he gradually introduces us to the unique yet utterly familiar world he inhabits. Mundane objects and pieces of furniture have been personified by Jack: Wardrobe is where he sleeps, Table with her scratches (which Jack thoughtfully tries to rub better) is where they eat and Meltedy Spoon is Jack’s favourite item of cutlery. Jack tells us that the spoon’s name comes from the fact that ”he” has gone “all blobby on his handle” from “when he leaned on the pan of boiling pasta by accident.” Amidst these poignant yet sweet recollections of the characters that populate his life he tells us briefly of the shadowy figure of ‘Old Nick’ who visits Room after nine at night: “He brings groceries and Sundaytreat and disappears the trash, but he’s not human like us. He only happens in the night like bats.” Jack’s naivety means that while he knows Old Nick’s visits are bad he does not comprehend their true horror like we, the readers, do. He doesn’t realise the significance of the nocturnal noises he hears:
“When Old Nick creaks Bed, I listen and count fives on my fingers, tonight it’s 217 creaks. I always have to count till he makes that gaspy sound and stops.”

Telling the story from Jack’s point of view is a good move on Donoghue’s part. The book would be a lot harder to read if we had to experience it through the mother's eyes. Jack brings with him the natural optimism of childhood and coupled with his youthful inexperience he manages to make the story a bit lighter. The fact that he has never known any other life apart from him and his Ma in Room means he doesn't realise what he is missing; his life is normal to him. Hearing Ma’s account of the tale would be a much more depressing read.

This small amount of normality is testament to Ma’s ferocious efforts to raise her child in the most ordinary way she can. She has obviously devoted all her time to educating Jack, with scheduled times for play and with random points throughout the day where games are played to improve Jack’s skills in language and numeracy. They practice Phys Ed with a track Ma has drawn on the floor and bounce on the bed pretending it’s a trampoline. Despite the limited resources Jack is precociously smart, he demonstrates reading, writing and mathematics skills far beyond what would be expected for a boy who has just turned five.

Although Jack is intellectually advanced he lacks any understanding of the outside world, something which Ma has actively encouraged. Jack believes that everything he sees in Room is real but everything he has never seen, (like things he’s read in books, or heard of in Ma’s stories or seen on the programmes he watches) are not real. They are just things that occur on the television: “Dogs are only TV....Spider’s real. I’ve seen her two times.” And “Vegetables are all real but ice cream is TV.” This is another place where being inside Jack’s head benefits the narrative; we see exactly how muddled up reality is for him even though he is not aware of it. His perception of the world is very skewed but it’s easy to understand why his mother is reluctant for him to know that there are lots of exciting things in the world that he has never been able to experience.

There are limitations that occur from having a five year old as the nrrator of the story, however. For instance, because Jack (like most small children) only knows his mother as Ma, we never get to discover her real name. Similarly it is unlikely that Nick is the name of her abductor as Jack admits: “I didn’t even know the name for him until I saw a cartoon about a guy that comes in the night called Old Nick. I call the real one that because he comes in the night, but he doesn’t look like the TV guy with a beard and horns and stuff.” It is apt to the reader that Jack has given his captor a name that is associated with the Devil but the questions that he doesn’t know to ask mean that there are gaps in the narrative. Similarly there are incidents that Jack recounts that mean nothing significant to him but that we can identify and contextualise. An example of this is the fact that woven through Jack’s account of the day we see various attempts his mother makes to try to attract attention to them. These escape bids are narrated by Jack in the same way that eating lunch and bath time are. He doesn’t draw attention to them because he doesn’t understand their relevance but it does make the reader wonder what else Ma is doing to try to secure their freedom that Jack may not have mentioned. There’s also the question of how reliable a narrator Jack is. His age (and lack of exposure to the outside world) means that not only is he unclear of how the world works but he is also at an age where imagination runs rife. It’s possible that some of the details he recalls have been elaborated or confused. Ultimately though these limitations do not damage the novel as it is meant to be Jack’s version of the story rather than a blow-by-blow victim statement (thankfully).

A question that has to be asked when reviewing this novel is how appropriate is it to write a work of fiction about something which is obviously inspired by real events. The horrifying crimes of Josef Fritzl against his daughter Elisabeth, the abduction of Natascha Kampusch by Wolfgang Priklopil and the similar kidnapping of Jaycee Lee Dugard by Phillip Craig Garrido spring immediately to mind when thinking about this novel. These were such appalling crimes that the press and the public were fixated on their stories as soon as they were made known. This novel could have come across as sensationalist and vulture-like but thankfully Donoghue’s handling of the story means this doesn’t happen. The sympathy and sensitivity with which she treats her characters ensure that the novel never feels exploitative. Donoghue shies away from any graphic descriptions of the horrors that are present in Jack and Ma’s story and instead of a tale of woe ‘Room’ is ultimately a tale of hope.

Throughout the novel readers get a clear sense of the abundance of love that mother and son share. Through Jack’s eyes we see how hard his mother has worked on bringing him up well and protecting him to the best of her ability. She shields him from Old Nick by hiding him in the wardrobe each night and by trying to maintain a docility of character whenever her abductor is in the room, with the implicit understanding that as long as she gives him no trouble he will not try to take an interest in Jack. It is remarkable that throughout the novel Ma never shows a single sign of resentment or ill feeling towards Jack. Considering the distressing way he came in to the world, Ma would be forgiven for struggling to bond with her son. Instead, however, it becomes clear that Jack is her reason for continuing to live at all. Jack offers her hope, he spurs her on and he makes her survive. Throughout the novel there are signs that Ma has days when she is deeply depressed and perhaps without Jack to depend on her she would have given up long before. Instead she does a remarkable job of bringing Jack up as a single mother. She has no support network and since she was abducted when she was only nineteen, she has had to learn the skills of motherhood quickly using what little knowledge she had picked up as a teenager and with television as her only information link with the outside world. The love between Jack and Ma is the strongest emotion that is brought out in Donoghue’s novel.

It’s impossible to write about the latter half of this novel without spoiling the ending but the turning point comes just before the half way mark in the book when Ma discovers that Old Nick has been unemployed for six months. As she begins to worry about what will happen when her captor runs out of money to feed her and her son she starts to wonder if, young as he is, Jack might just be able to pull off the bravest stunt of his life and get them out of their prison. I would not describe the conclusion of ‘Room’ as a happy ending exactly, but it does feel like a true one. Donoghue does not promise that Jack and Ma will live happily ever after but she does offer a spark of hope in a confusing and disheartening world.