Room

Room, is a story following a mother and a child escaping a life of confinement and isolation. They live within a 12 x 12 foot shed and ‘Old Nick' comes to visit them in the night. The novel is told through 5 years old, Jack's eyes. He tells the story with innocence and has only a slight awareness of the more sinister goings on.

The room he was born and brought up in contains all the things he has ever known. Jack is not aware that the ‘outside' is real and he believes the Room is all that there is. Jacks mother, or Ma as he calls her, spends all of her time teaching and nurturing him. She keeps strict meal times and limits television time, trying to keep an ‘ordinary' life for her son. Their relationship is deep and filled with attentive love to each other which makes the book very heart warming.

We are told that she was kidnapped when she was just 19 and has had no contact with the outside world for 9 years.

However Ma soon realises that Jack is growing up and the room is becoming too small. With Jack becoming increasingly aware of Old Nick, who visits in the night, she decides it is time to escape.

SPOILER- The story then follows their escape from the Room and the readjustment back into ‘normal life'.

Personally, I found this book to be gripping and hard to put down. It was interesting to follow the story through Jacks eyes as it gave a new perspective to the sinister events. This allowed the book to become more readable to most audiences. The only let down I found, was that the ending was more of a closure for the book, rather than a large climax. It allowed the gripping book to let you go at the end but didn't leave have a huge significance.

I would highly recommend this to anybody, particularly if they were interested in psychology and human behaviour.