It’s Jack’s birthday, and he’s excited about turning five.
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. Unsentimental and sometimes funny, devastating yet uplifting, Room is a novel like no other.
'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
'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, author of The Time Traveler's Wife
'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
'a boundary-pushing story of jaw-dropping cruelty told with eye-watering tenderness... In writing this Emma Donoghue has turned a spotlight on contemporary western society and with this unique voice she has created a must read for all.' --Patrick Neale, Bookseller
'an utterly compelling novel about a mother and son, held captive inside a ''room''... The novel is horrific, yet never horrifying, touching yet never sentimental. It has something of The Lovely Bones about it.' --Sue Scholes, Bookseller
'Donoghue imbues Jack with an acute intelligence and is masterful at showing us his strange perceptions. This is not a comfortable read, but it's an unforgettable one.' --Ruth Hunter, Bookseller
'Imagine living in a room 12 feet by 12 feet. Imagine that you've never left. Imagine that you're five years old and the only person you've met is your mother, who was kidnapped as a teenager. Imagine that one night, through courage and desperation, you get outside. Emma Donoghue brilliantly imagines the unimaginable with equal parts compassion and style. A surefire prize-winner.' --Diva
'Emma Donoghue has written a heartbreaking, heart-racing unnerving novel.' -- Waterstones Books Quarterly
'With echoes of the Josef Fritzl case and touted as the most controversial novel of the summer, this book will . . . have you turning the pages until the wee hours.' --Grazia
'Part childhood adventure story, part adult thriller, Room is above all the most vivid, radiant and beautiful expression of maternal love I have ever read. Emma Donoghue has stared into the abyss, honoured her sources and returned with the literary equivalent of a great Madonna and Child. This book will break your heart.' --The Irish Times
'It takes a consummate writer to make us marvel at the mundane. Beckett's Waiting for Godot did it, of course. So did Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, set in a 1950s Siberian labour camp.
Emma Donoghue does it so spectacularly that we are taken by surprise when, in the middle of the novel, resourceful Ma's escape plans swing into action.
The reader hurries on partly because Jack is so masterful a creation. Like John Boyne's Bruno in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, he knows more than he understands. And the dramatic irony heightens the poignancy of the tale as it progresses into the third section, which deals with life after abduction.' --The Irish Independent
