I’m supposed to write a post for the From Left to Write book club about Room by Emma Donoghue and how it relates to my life. A personal anecdote or something along those lines; no book reviews please.
The thing is, Room is about a young mother and her son living confined to one room. Some psychopath has them held hostage: the little boy was born there and knows no other reality; the mother has been raped and assaulted for upwards of seven years. Thankfully, I have no experience whatsoever that even begins to relate to that horrifying scenario.
The only thing that comes to mind is the skewed or limited perspective of children. Room is told through the eyes of five-year-old Jack, grammatical errors and sharply limited understanding of his world included. Irksome because Jack doesn’t directly explain their circumstances or background history, his narrative certainly gives an unusual touch to an otherwise gut-wrenching story.
Maybe it’s because I don’t have children or maybe it’s because Jack leads an exceptionally sheltered life (his mother has essentially created a fairytale existence for him to shield him from his harsh and terrifying reality), but I generally give kids far more credit in the smarts department. He calls everything by a given name. For example, “Ma poured cereal into Bowl and I ate it with Spoon,” rather than using articles and nouns (the bowl, a spoon, no capitalization) as they should be, not as proper names. In any event, it drives me up the wall. And is one more thing I can’t relate to.
Apologies for being such a debbie downer but this book depresses the shit out of me. I’m one of those people who want their books to be smart and thought-provoking or at the very least easy and pleasant. Unhappy realities told through exceptionally ignorant viewpoints are something I generally avoid. Room got me out of my comfort zone, but that’s about the only praise I can give it.
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