Room - Emma Donoghue

The first thing that came to mind after I finished reading this book was a short story I had studied in my English Literature Ode to Fear MA course. It's by Richard Matheson:

X — This day when it had light mother called me retch. You retch she said. I saw in her eyes the anger. I wonder what it is a retch.
This day it had water falling from upstairs. It fell all around. I saw that. The ground of the back I watched from the little window. The ground it sucked up the water like thirsty lips. It drank too much and it got sick and runny brown. I didnt like it.
Mother is a pretty I know. In my bed place with cold walls around I have a paper things that was behind the furnace. It says on it 5CREENSTARS. I see in the pictures faces like of mother and father. Father says they are pretty. Once he said it. And also mother he said. Mother so pretty and me decent enough. Look at you he said and didnt have the nice face. I touched his arm and said it is alright father. He shook and pulled away where I couldnt reach. Today mother let me off the chain a little so I could look out the little window. Thats how l saw the water falling from upstairs. (Matheson, Born of Man and Woman)

It's a short story about a boy who is locked away in a cellar by his mother and father. Similarly, Jack the protagonist in Room is locked away with his mother by a kidnapper who has kept Ma locked away in a tiny room for seven years. The difference between the boy in Matheson's story and Jack, is that Jack is growing up with no sense of the real world, he does however develop perfect speech and his mother teaches him everything about what she calls the "television world". Jack is the narrator in the novel, it shows that he is a very smart 5-year old, but that he is struggling with grammar, for example: "I know who brung it" (Donoghue, 54) However this young boy is quite clever for his age. The only concept he is struggling with is the vast amount of things living and going on in Outside.

It's a very intelligent book about a boy and his Ma who have lived most of their lives in solitary confinement and who had to live with each other in one single room for most of their lives. The only other person Jack knows is the evil Old Nick who comes by every now and then to "make the bed creak" with Jack's Ma. It's definitely a book I would recommend, because it's a very touching story about a small boy who is learning about life within the confines of a single room.