Room

Room

by Emma Donoghue

Finished the frightening story of Jack’s and Ma’s captivity at the hands of Old Nick, a demented man who kidnapped Jack’s mother at age eighteen while she was attending college.  The book, Room, by Emma Donoghue, was inspired by another case similar to the one she tells.  The story is told from the perspective of the five-year-old youth who was born in the room. The boy is convinced by his mother to play ‘dead’ as she rolls him up in a carpet to be taken away by Old Nick, which he does.  The escape plan works. The youth escapes from the truck he was being carried in to be buried and a passer-by notices his fall from the truck and calls the police.  The last half of the book follows how Jack and Ma are brought to the hospital to begin the recovery process and his meeting his previously unknown grandparents.  The difficulties for re-integration are harder than one would imagine.  A tough read based on true stories, as hard to believe as it is.  When we lived in Syracuse, there was a very sick man holding a woman in captive underground in a similar way for years.  The question remains, how can people cause this much pain to others?  Well written, but the subject matter wasn’t a hit for me.