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The novel Room tells a kind of story that can and does happen in the real world, a kind of story that horrifies us when we read of it in the newspaper and “can't imagine” what it must have been like. Author Emma Donaghue dares to imagine, captivating the audience with the point of view of a five-year-old boy.
Aside from the stunning virtuosity of the writer's imagination, this horrific departure from ordinary childhood illustrates a great deal about mothers and their children, and, therefore, all of us. Emma Donaghue puts into the words of a lively and stubborn five-year-old some universal aspects of human psychology. These aspects relate to a part of the personality that fundamentally renunciates separation and the creation of a shared sensorial world that serves as a necessary basis for the ultimate development of human relating.
We meet the narrator, Jack, on his fifth birthday. He has been born in captivity, and is being raised by his young mother “Ma.” Both are trapped in a tiny 11′ × 11′ shed, the one she was locked into by her kidnapper and rapist “Old Nick,” seven years prior, when she was 19. This is the only world Jack knows. At first Jack believes that everything inside the room is real, and everything else is “in the TV,” which shows him images of absolutely inaccessible places and things. The only other human contact in his world is visits from their captor, either at night or on Sundays. Jack looks forward to the various “Sunday treats” Old Nick sometimes brings. These treats are for the most part basic rations that they need to survive in the shed. The author's brilliant imaginings of how a five-year-old would perceive a co-created world inhabited by “Jack and Ma,” a place where conception is rape, motherhood is imprisonment, and thirdness is violent entry from a mysterious “outside,” is absolutely riveting.