How can you write about the most horrific of situations without triggering instant reactions from your readers? I'm not saying our personal reactions of horror at the situation presented are not right and proper, I'm just saying for an author it means you cannot get your reader to focus on the part of the story you may want them to.
Emma Donoghue has made a really interesting decision... to tell the story of a terrible crime from the point of view of an innocent child. This is not a decision to magnify the terror by involving a child. In fact, the story is narrated by a five-year-old from start to finish... who at times is scared but who largely is not the one directly victimised, is remains relatively unclear about what is actually going on.
In the long run what makes this a fascinating book is that the child himself has been bought up entirely inside a single small room. His mother has done everything she can to create a loving environment, and despite her own terrible circumstance, surrounds him with games, exercise and learning (mostly from the television). Consequently the boy has come to believe the world consists only of the room, his mother, and the stranger who sometimes comes in at night. Things on TV he believes are not real, and the "Outside" is something like outer space.
So this is simultaneously a book about altered states, about seeing reality from an unusual perspective, and about a gripping story of escape. The author has avoided the temptation to make the youngster a superhero. He is a normal five year old with fears, vacillations and a limited capacity for understanding. His bravery extends only up to the moment when he imagines he will hurt a finger. I thought the scenes where his mother was trying to hide her adult understanding of their danger while persuading the boy to help in an escape were powerful indeed.
Just as the story is set up so the reader focuses on the people, not the crime, so the compass of the book is about much more than a crime or adventure story. Rather than a simple "happy ending" the book spends a good deal of time looking at the internal and external consequences of rescue. It is hard to explain more without giving away too much!
This is a delightful book about a dark subject, but the message is about healing and recovery, and the power of a parent's sacrificial love to create safety for a child. The book is populated by believable and fallible adults, and a very believable young boy caught up in a whirlpool of adult events. Even as I write this review, I am thinking about dipping back in to re-read sections, so appealing and vivid is the creation of the young narrator.
Oh, and the title? The boy does not know "beds" and "rooms" so he personifies each object in his tiny world... "Bed", "Rug", "Table" and "Wardrobe" and of course "Room".
Andrew Lack
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