Birthday Book Recs 11/50 : Room by Emma Donoghue
Room by Emma Donoghue
Birthday Book Recs: 11/50
Room by Emma Donoghue
I read this one for a book club when my kids were little and it gutted me to the core. However, at this particular book club everyone seemed to be merely fixated on the overarching plot, which is sort of a ripped-from-the-headlines tale of a woman who is kidnapped and held hostage in a bunker-like area with her son — who is a product of this terrible and tragic situation. I mean, ok, that’s pretty wild and I guess one would sort of fixate on that. BUT, this is literary fiction and not a thriller or mystery (or, sigh, Colleen Hoover book), and what Donoghue does so, so skillfully is use the basic plot to illustrate the intense bond between a mother and her child and how this mother will do literally anything to keep him whole and healthy (all things considered) in a totally un-normal situation. Room is narrated from the perspective of 5-year-old Jack, which must be an incredibly hard thing to pull off. So, yeah, I was the nerd who wanted to discuss all this while everyone else was (perhaps rightfully) like, “This is scary!”
This novel is brilliant. Maybe I’ll re-read it in 2026 when little kids aren’t on the brain.
{Back in May I posted a pic of the house newborn me came home to in Los Angeles and referenced a quote from The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard — and that I couldn’t find the book because it probably was in storage. Behold! Here it is, next to Room on our shelf. And next to *that* is a copy of Heidi given to me by my grandparents in 1982. I opened it up for the first time in several years and realized that I must have been really feelin’ myself with my big kid book collection. #thisbookbelongstoME}
You can find all my 50th Birthday Book Recommendations HERE.
originally published on instagram