{"id":2744,"date":"2012-07-30T21:44:26","date_gmt":"2012-07-31T01:44:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/?p=2744"},"modified":"2012-10-06T00:29:50","modified_gmt":"2012-10-06T04:29:50","slug":"book-review-room-by-emma-donoghue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/archives\/2744","title":{"rendered":"Room by Emma Donoghue"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>
\n [rating=4] Riveting. Read this nearly in one sitting. Incredibly well crafted, ‘Room’<\/a> is a crazy but successful exercise in trying to inhabit the minds of people whose experience is far outside your own ken. <\/p>\n

I wonder if Emma Donoghue wrote this purely from reading reports of abductions, or if she interviewed women who have lived through this particular hell – the frame of the story is a hybrid of several high-profile kidnapping cases, particularly those of Colleen Stan<\/a> and Jaycee Dugard<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Narrating from the POV of Jack, the five year old, was a wise choice. It allows the nightmare of their situation to be blunted by his lack of full comprehension; wordplay comedy and bath time and ‘Dora the Explorer’<\/a> dull the knife edge of fear that gripped me every time I witnessed the mother protecting Jack from the brutal truth. <\/p>\n

Beyond her stoicism and endurance, Ma’s creativity blew my mind; the toys they build from trash and the games she invents – particularly ‘Parrot’ – were so inventive and educational I wanted to take notes.<\/p>\n

Probably one of the scariest books I have read in a long time, because of the awful reality that such abominable acts do happen. Worth reading.<\/p>\n

For more gripping drama and compelling reading, you might try…<\/strong><\/p>\n

1) Lionel Shriver’s ‘We Need To Talk About Kevin’<\/a><\/p>\n

2) Ami McKay’s ‘The Birth House’<\/a><\/p>\n

3) Audrey Niffenegger’s ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’<\/a><\/p>\n

4 of 5 stars \/ bookshelves: read, 321 pages, Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (2010)
\nRead from July 28 to 30, 2012<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[rating=4] Riveting. Read this nearly in one sitting. Incredibly well crafted, ‘Room’ is a crazy but successful exercise in trying to inhabit the minds of people whose experience is far outside your own ken. I wonder if Emma Donoghue wrote this purely from reading reports of abductions, or if she interviewed women who have lived […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1533,1380],"tags":[1449,1529,1450,1453,1263,401,1448,1451,1530,1452],"class_list":["post-2744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction-book-reviews","category-book-reviews","tag-abduction","tag-boy","tag-childhood","tag-drama","tag-fiction","tag-mother","tag-room","tag-serious","tag-survival","tag-tense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2744"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2744"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2877,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2744\/revisions\/2877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pipesdreams.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}