It seems the last couple of weeks, I really have been reading all the books in the news. But what can I do? There are some seriously good books out there, only recently I was complaining about a lack of good contemporary reading, and look, the universe complied.
There are so many good new books, I fear my writing about the old and the forgotten might be neglected for a little while. But never mind. On the bright side, these next couple of weeks, if you want to read something I talk about here, it won’t be a wild chase across Amazon and second hand shops.
So, Room, by Emma Donoghue, herself no debut writer, but this, the seventh of her novels, is all over the press because it’s been shortlisted for the Booker prize. Oddly enough, the Booker shortlist also includes In A Strange Room by Damon Galgut. It was probably a year for interiors. Room though, speaks to me faintly of A Curious Incident Of A Dog At Nighttime, perhaps because the narrators are both precocious youngsters with vocabularies far beyond their ages and very little social conditioning. Unlike the 15-year-old narrator of Curious Incident, however, Room’s young protagonist is only five. And up till the moment the book begins, his world has been room, his companions — bed, and table and wall and his 27-year-old Ma. You find out quite early in the book (so I’m not spoiling anything) that Jack and his Ma have been held captive by a kidnapper for a long time, but then as his world expands, he has to navigate the outside, quite a different universe than his friendly room.
I like the “in” voice of the novel, Jack jumps straight in when he’s talking to you, you feel almost as if he’s slipped his little palm into your hand and is explaining to you in a grave voice, the events of his day. From the hour he and his mother spend screaming into the skylight (and this part is particularly poignant, because you see what she’s trying to do, but he’s just having a good time) to his delight with things (the kidnapper brings him a remote control jeep for his birthday) and his relationship with his mother, it’s all very beautiful and drawn out. When they do escape, it almost dilutes the voice a little bit, Jack’s no longer going about the minutes of his day, but by now you’re so engrossed in the book that you just want to keep reading, no matter what.
Of course, it is a depressing book, especially with the recent kidnappings and imprisonment of women all over the world brought into the press, but there’s hope at the end, and Jack remains entirely, utterly himself. Oh, I’d love to be new to this book all over again, to read it anew all in one afternoon, and for that, lucky reader, I envy you.
The writer is an author