Every parent's nightmare...

Room

By Emma Donoghue

Imagine being abducted from your college campus.

Imagine living in a 13 x 13 room for years.

Imagine your abductor repeatedly raping you so that it becomes a part of your routine existence.

Imagine giving birth to a son in your room as a result of those rapes.

Imagine that child being the gift that keeps you alive.

Room is a fascinating – and terrifying – tale of abduction.  What sets it apart from other tales is the voice it is told in.  It is told from the voice of the child born out of the abduction.  It is a voice of innocence that sees the world for what it is in simple terms.  Bed is bed.  Wall is wall.  Mouse is his friend, but he is a secret.  He can't have a dog.  Room is where they live and a man named "Old Nick" brings food and takes his time with his mother away from him while he is locked in a wardrobe.   

Room is certainly every parent’s nightmare, but it is more than that.  It is also a beautiful story of the love between mother and child and the lengths that a mother will go to even under the worst of circumstances to raise a healthy creative child and protect him from harm.  As parents, we all know that children don’t come with instruction manuals and the idea of giving birth to a child in a 13 x13 room and then raising him there for 5 years seems utterly heroic in my mind – for both child and mother!