Room by Emma Donoghue (review) with Cereal Box Prize bonus: Cute stories about baby Jen!

Room, Emma Donoghue (2010)

*The book discussed and my discussion of it refer to violence and traumatizing situations that may be difficult for some people to read. Spoilers ahead.*

Think about what you knew of the world when you were a really little kid. Do it: just dig deep and think as far back as you can, maybe to one of your earliest memories. There's probably an adorable story back there somewhere about a belief you had formed about the world that, with the advantage of adult hindsight, seems ridiculous now or just totally random.

By the way, this review is not short or sweet, but pretty rambly. If you want to miss all the fun, you can Jump to Short n' Sweet Review

I was a very adorable baby

When I was two and a half-ish, my mom was pregnant with my little brother, Ed. I remember one night we got McDonald's for dinner and before mom could eat any of her fries, I would bite off all the crusty ends and then give her the soft middle parts. My dad got annoyed and asked me what I was doing, and I very rationally explained to him that I was biting off the sharp parts so they wouldn't poke the baby.

Cute, right? Cue the pre-recorded audience aaawwwwwwwwwwww!

While reading Room, I relived several memories from my childhood, each just as adorable and deluded as Waiter Grover trying to use mnemonic devices to remember the bald guy's lunch order. Or what about Don Karnage's weird cryptic threat in Tail Spin to use turnips and sandpaper? Turnips and sandpaper to do what?! WHAT IS HE GOING TO DO WITH THE TURNIPS AND SANDPAPER?!?!?!

**I'm sorry, I completely got sucked into one of the unfathomable mysteries of my youth. Seriously, my childhood was all Narnia and Disney cartoons... childhood in the 90's... the most fragalicious decade to have a childhood, IMHO. Anyway, back to the book review about a very unfortunate little kid who did not get to grow up in the 90's, but who grew up in a shack... which is intensely depressing. If it wasn't for Grover and his sense of hope, instilled in me during those formative years, I would abandon this post, which I am sure no one will ever read (except for myself spasmodically refreshing the page to see my "views" number increase) and go watch Tail Spin right now.**

So, reading this book, I found myself frequently remembering how the world appeared to my tiny little baby brain, and the often absurd outcomes. I think that is at the heart of Donoghue's novel: how a child will make sense of the world and conquer it with that understanding with a resiliency and innocence that will never be duplicated again.

I should start off by first stating that Room is exactly the kind of book I like: eerie, dark, a touch of magical realism, an unreliable narrator, and a complicated path upon which the characters grow and learn and are entirely changed by the end of the story. What I've just described there is a very basic structure of modern literature, but one that can be difficult to achieve as it requires a balance of some confusion to drive the conflict with stability to lead the conflict to concrete ends.

I would put this book in a family with Gone Girl, The Bees, and The Blind Assassin for the shared notable characteristic in these novels that I call the modern twist. This is the point in the story where not only am I not sure who to trust, but I'm also not sure I know what's going on, and equally unsure if I still want for the characters what I wanted at the beginning of the novel.

In Room, we have a cursory understanding of the situation - Jack and his Ma live in a tiny room and are being held there by Old Nick, the big bad who had kidnapped Jack's Ma before Jack was born. At the beginning, it's obvious that this is a no-good set of circumstances. I mean, it's not exactly fun to be kidnapped and kept locked up in a room, while your mother is repeatedly raped by her kidnapper. But that's what I, as the reader, know, and those are the judgments I bring with me. Donoghue allows us to see this whole thing from Jack's perspective, and it's a totally different story: Jack and his Ma live in Room, where they have all their friends like meltedy spoon and rug. They play all day and sing songs and use their imaginations. Ma knows everything and makes their tiny world as exciting and fulfilling as she can.

In a super twisted way, Donoghue uses the backdrop of heinous, violent actions to create contrast with a sweetly idealized world view of the main character, and through him, she ropes the readers into fellowship with him and his tele-malnourished devotion to Dora the Explorer.

Over the course of the story it's clear that Jack has no desire for escape, or for that matter any understanding at all that he and his Ma are in any kind of danger. He's protected by his own innocence against the violence and vulgarity in which he ironically originated. With his super power of seeing the world so flatly, he's able to overcome the dangers of his world - albeit with great difficulty, but afforded the clear objective of a child: to be good, to do what his mother asks of him. Jack is a true Prometheus archetype - with no understanding of the risks he takes, he's unburdened by fear (mostly).

My imagination was totally captured by how rational Jack's infantile perspective of the world really seems. By the climax of the story, I feel as protective of Jack's world in Room as himself. Donoghue's story telling through the eyes of a 5 year old child, reminded me of being 5 and what the world looked like to me. I certainly wasn't locked up in a shed, but I did have a sense of justice according to rules and laws I developed by just trying to be a human being.

This is exactly what my fabled fanny pack looked like,
except mine was pink. This one is on sale by
  some rando on ebay for $29 as of this posting.

Like, one time, my mom was trying to get me to wear a fanny pack. At the worldly age of 5, even I knew that fanny packs are stupid (of course I'm a responsible hipster and actually own two fanny packs that I wear ironically whenever I feel too lazy to grab a purse or put on pants that aren't made out of spandex... ironically ). So I said to her, all straight-faced, I swear, "Mom, I can't wear that because it'll make me look too cool. And if I'm cool, then all the cool kids will think I smoke cigarettes (because that's what cool kids do). And cigarettes are bad." My mom was baffled by my logic and I didn't have to wear the neon Mickey Mouse fanny pack that I saw on ebay the other day going for like $30!! I mean, seriously, my childhood is being auctioned off piecemeal one crappy polyester accessory at a time, and, no, Beanie Babies DID NOT pay for my college. That's kids' jobs, by the way: learn to be a human being. And it's the same job, the same priorities no matter where the child is living, what's happening to them, or what's going on. They just want to be people.

Not only does Donoghue's novel capture a poetic rhetoric or losing innocence, attempting to escape violence through innocence, and finding that reclaiming innocence is hard if not totally impossible for adults like Jack's Ma, but it also forces a perspective that seems ridiculous, in order to illuminate a spectrum of possibilities. I missed Room, when Jack and Ma finally left it, then I missed my room and my toys from my own childhood. I had to grieve for them anew when I turned the last page on Room and Jack discovered, like so very many before him, that you can't go back to ignorant innocence once you've seen the world beyond it.

TL;DR - Good book, worth the time to read, took me a couple of days, easily. Yes, told from a kid's perspective, and if you don't like that kind of thing, then you WILL find this unbearable. However, if you can manage using your imagination and open your mind a little, it's engaging. Skull Safety factor of 10: nothing mind-blowing here. Read this novel if you liked Gone Girl because you enjoy being confused a little, if you've ever found the weird things kids say to somehow reveal a brilliance of innocence that is elusive in adulthood, or if you like creepy things with a happy ending.

4 out of 5 Dora the Explorer anthropomorphic backpacks

P.S. this is what I was talking about, it makes no sense: