Room

Told from the perspective of five-year-old Jack, Emma Donoghue’s profoundly affecting novel is a devastating portrait of a boundless maternal love.

The novel opens as Jack turns five. Jack lives with his Ma in Room. Room has a single locked door and a skylight, and it measures ten feet by ten feet. Jack loves watching TV but he knows that nothing he sees on the screen is truly real - only him, Ma and the things in Room. Until the day Ma admits there is another world outside.

"Jack’s voice is one of the pure triumphs of the novel: in him, she has invented a child narrator who is one of the most engaging in years — his voice so pervasive I could hear him chatting away during the day when I wasn’t reading the book. Donoghue rearranges language to evoke the sweetness of a child’s learning without making him coy or overly darling; Jack is lovable simply because he is lovable … There’s a lot to manage — the external, vivid, social world is a huge and gratifying resource here, and Jack’s eyes remake the familiar. It is invigorating, watching him learn, and the way Donoghue reveals the consequences of Room through her attention to detail is tremendous."  -  Aimee Bender, The New York Times Sunday Book Review

Shortlisted for the 2011 Women's Prize For Fiction

Emma Donoghue was born in Dublin, and is most widely known for her international bestseller, Room. An Irish emigrant twice over, she spent eight years in Cambridge, England before moving to Canada’s London, Ontario. Her novels range from the historical (The Wonder, Slammerkin, Life Mask, The Sealed Letter) to the contemporary (Akin, Stir-Fry, Hood, Landing). Room was a New York Times Best Book of 2010 and was longlisted for the Commonwealth, and Orange Prizes.