Jack is 5. He lives with his Ma live in Room. Jack sleeps in Wardrobe at night when Old Nick comes.
At first I thought this was going to be a hard book to read. Jack's fifth birthday is described in detail from the point of a five-year-old boy who does not know anything outside Room. I thought it was going to be hard to read a book written by a five-year-old.
I won't say why Jack and his Ma live in Room. Or what happens. You need to find out for yourself. I will only say that in the middle of the book I was so excited because I genuinely had no idea what would happen next that I was speed-reading, tearing the pages with my eyes. There is one moment when a tension is resolved only to be immediately replaced with another tension which takes another few pages to resolve, a twin peak of excitement. And even after that every page had compassion and bitterness and tenderness and anger and even humour.
And the ending was just right.
What a wonderful book.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2010 and the Women's Prize for fiction in 2011.
May 2011; 401 pages
May 2011; 401 pages
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