Brilliantly horrific, terrifyingly shocking and upsettingly poignant are just some of the words that could be used to describe Emma Donoghue's Room.
What makes it so brilliant is a perfect plotline, written from the perspective of a 5-year-old boy who doesn't understand the cruel world he has been born into.
Humour and black humour make appearance throughout the novel, which slowly unravels the tale of Jack and his mother, "Ma", who was kidnapped at the age of 19.
For example, Jack wants to hear a story:
‘"Goldilocks?"
"Too scary."
"The bears only growl at her," says Ma.
"Still."
"Princess Diana?"
"Should have worn her seat belt."
"See, you know them all." Ma puffs her breath.
Kept in a room for the past seven years, Jack was born and raised in the space and it is all he has ever known. How do you explain to a small child the complexities of a big, wide world that he has never been in?
Poignancy is key in how the tragic story has been written by Donoghue — very cleverly but simply through the eyes of a child.
Interaction between Jack and his Ma is sometimes normal — as normal as any child speaking to his mother — and at other times very strange, reminding the reader of their captive situation.
Slowly but surely the reader learns the couple's daily routine, from waking up to eating, to washing, to exercise, to doing "scream" (trying to draw attention to any passers-by from the sound-proofed room), to visits from captor "Old Nick" and the hopelessness that washes over Ma.
Ultimately, their escape is a voyage of discovery for Jack who after all knows nothing of the world outside the "Room".
It is a shocking discovery for the young, long-haired boy when Ma is forced to tell him the truth: that there is a world outside of their four sound-proofed walls. Ma is repeatedly raped by her captor Old Nick. Using a five-year-old as the narrator shocks and stuns the reader. Where Jack doesn't understand what is going on, the reader does.
Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife, wrote of Room that it is a book you read "in one sitting".
It is definitely that and more — it is imaginable that Room will keep many awake late at night — not just because you won't be able to go to sleep without finishing it but also because it is so affecting. "When it's over you look up: The world looks the same but you are somehow different and that feeling lingers for days," Niffenegger wrote.
Perhaps it is also the simplistic language that makes Room so gripping, easy to read but shocking and horrifying at the same time.
As the little boy finds out a lot of amazing, scary things about the world, so his interaction and experiences remind the reader just how the world works.
Scared to go out in the rain with his photosensitive skin and unable to walk down stairs for the first time, Jack is an example of what children would be like if they were born with a 5-year-old's body.
John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, wrote that Room was "one of the most profoundly affecting books I've read in a long time. Jack — and Ma, of course, but mainly 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."
Donoghue has ten books to her name, after first publishing Stir-fry in 1994.
Room is on the list for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2010 and is due to be released in August-September this year.
