Room By Emma Donoghue

‘Room’ has attracted some polarised views; on one hand it has received critical and commercial success, whilst others have also hated the book. My advice? You need to be in a happy place before reading this book.

I have read reviews that found the five year old narrator's voice an irritating one, or unconvincing. I did not feel the same, and although there were a few moments in the opening sections which were repetitious and even verging on the mundane, the more of the book that I read, the more the reasons behind this became obvious.

The structure moves the narrative along, whilst at the same time providing a clever deliberation on the strength of the mother/child bond.

It was also interesting to see, not just how life changed for the mother and child when they escaped, but how their close bond was interpreted by the outside world. Moreover, these later sections also forced the reader to question what was safe/not-safe, how commercialism has affected modern life, as well as the role of the extended family.

For me, though, the book is an intelligent and detailed exploration of the way the human mind constructs its own reality. Full of tenderness as well as pain, this celebrates the relationship created by this young mother with her son, and reveals the enormous potential for resilience in the human spirit.