AUDIOBOOK REVIEW: Room

TITLE: Room
AUTHOR: Emma Donoghue
NARRATORS: Michal Friedman, Ellen Archer, Suzanne Toren, and Robert Petkoff
PUBLISHER: Hachette Audio
DATE OF PUBLICATION: September 13, 2010
FORMAT: Unabridged OverDrive WMA Audiobook (10 hours, 45 minutes)
GENRE: Fiction
ISBN: 978-1607886280

SYNOPSIS FROM GOODREADS:

In many ways, Jack is a typical 5-year-old. He likes to read books, watch TV, and play games with his Ma. But Jack is different in a big way--he has lived his entire life in a single room, sharing the tiny space with only his mother and an unnerving nighttime visitor known as Old Nick. For Jack, Room is the only world he knows, but for Ma, it is a prison in which she has tried to craft a normal life for her son. When their insular world suddenly expands beyond the confines of their four walls, the consequences are piercing and extraordinary. Despite its profoundly disturbing premise, Emma Donoghue's Room is rife with moments of hope and beauty, and the dogged determination to live, even in the most desolate circumstances. A stunning and original novel of survival in captivity, readers who enter Room will leave staggered, as though, like Jack, they are seeing the world for the very first time.

MY REVIEW:

This book was on both Amazon.ca and Indigo’s Best Book of 2010. It was listed as Amazon's Best of the Month for September 2010. It was actually sitting at #1 on Macleans Fiction List for the week of March 8^th, 2011.

It is a pretty disturbing book written from the perspective of a five-year old boy named Jack, who has spent his entire life in captivity. He was borne to a woman who was kidnapped at the age of 19 and held captive in a single room for seven years. Jack’s mom tries to make his life as “normal” as possible. I do not want to give any further details, as I do not want to spoil the story for others.

The website, http://www.roomthebook.com/, has a floor plan of room, as well as discussion questions.

MY RATING: 4 stars!

This book qualifies as:
#16 for my 2011 100+ Reading Challenge
#10 for my 2011 Audio Book Challenge
#10 for my 2011 "Whisper Stories in My Ear" Challenge