ROOM by Emma Donoghue

Now, this isn't a new book on the market by any means but to me it still feels like I read it yesterday. The story was nothing like I've ever read before, and told in such a way that made me speed through it in just two days (which for me is pretty good going).

"Jack is five. He lives in a single locked room with his Ma. "

The blurb is not very long but really intrigued me and gave me everything I needed to know to pick this book up. The book is told entirely from the point of view of a young boy named Jack and the story begins on his fifth birthday. Right from the off you learn that things are not the same for Jack as a normal five year old boy. The narrative for me is very believable, that a young boy in Jacks circumstance is telling the story. He has grown up in a single room all his life so his perceptions of things are skewed to say the least. I can see how the narration would become tiresome to some readers, inanimate objects are often personified for example "I flat the chairs and put them beside Door against Clothes Horse". Jacks character has only ever been around one other person, his Ma, so he is bound to have under developed speech. For me this style of narration really added to the atmosphere of the book and made the story more believable.
The other characters we meet in the beginning of the book is Jacks "Ma" and their captor who Jack names  "Old Nick". The back story of how Jack and his Ma came to be, held in a 11ft by 11ft shed, is slowly revealed as Jacks Ma tries to explain to Jack that there is a whole world outside of 'Room'.

This book, like I keep saying, had me hooked from the beginning and I really couldn't put the book down. Emma Donoghue has talked in interviews about the research she did into real life situations like Ma and Jacks' and to me this really came through right to the end of this book I felt for these characters and believed all they had been through. I definitely recommend this book to any readers, even if this isn't your genre or you've read stories about kidnappings and and hostages before, I genuinely think this book is worth picking up.

Beth x