Winner of the Hughes & Hughes Novel of the Year Award 2010.

Shortlisted for the Galaxy International Author of the Year 2010.

August 2010 Book of the Month.

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010.

This is probably the most extraordinary book you will read for a long time.  Although the premise has been done before and the story told from both the captor and the victim’s view point, I don’t believe it has ever been told from the perspective of a 5-year old child born to 'Ma' a woman who was kidnapped and has never left her prison. The 12 x 12 room is his world and he knows no other.  He is happy with his mother, he’s normal and he is innocent.  What happens when his world is shattered is extraordinary.  Despite finding his voice hard to read, read it you must.

Comparison: Unique, like The Time Traveler’s Wife, The Lovely Bones or The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.

Synopsis

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.

Reviews

'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

About the Author

Emma Donoghue was born in Ireland in 1969 and lived in England before moving to Canada. Emma writes fiction (including the bestselling Slammerkin), drama for stage and radio, and literary history; Room is her seventh novel. Some of the places she found her inspiration : Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), feralchildren.com, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006), Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh (1856), John Fowles’s The Collector (1963), Anne Frank’s Diary (1947), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), Terminator 2 : Judgment Day (1991), The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs (1966), but above all in conversation with my five-year-old son. More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation