Windy City Media Group Frontpage News

THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

home search facebook twitter join
Gay News Sponsor Windy City Times 2023-12-13
DOWNLOAD ISSUE
Donate

Sponsor
Sponsor
Sponsor

  WINDY CITY TIMES

Room: A Novel
BOOK REVIEW
by Yasmin Nair
2010-11-24

This article shared 4048 times since Wed Nov 24, 2010
facebook twitter pin it google +1 reddit email


by Emma Donoghue $24.99; Little, Brown and Company; 321 pages

In 2008, 42-year-old Elisabeth Fritzl revealed to police in the Austrian town of Amstetten that she had been held captive by her father, Josef, for 24 years. Over that period, Fritzl repeatedly raped and abused his daughter, forcing her to give birth to seven children in total.

The story and its nightmarish details consumed the world for months. It, and similar cases, prompted the Irish-Canadian lesbian writer Emma Donoghue to write Room, a novel about the abduction of a young college student by a man we will only know as "Old Nick." But while much of the media coverage around these true-life stories has focused on what the women went through, few have discussed the children.

Room is written from the perspective of Jack, and we only know his mother as "Ma." Jack is five—the novel begins with a birthday celebration—and has never known the outside world, having been born here. He and his mother are confined to a room, 11 feet by 11 feet, fitted with the bare necessities to which they give names, without corresponding articles: Blanket, Bed, Door. Through the last, Nick comes by, carefully closing it behind him via an automatic system, bearing food and the occasional gift for Jack, whom he is never allowed to see. On most nights, he rapes Ma on Bed; she has given up registering protest. Jack lies inside Wardrobe, listening to the sounds that he doesn't understand; he simply wants to get back to sleep: "I put Blanket over my head and press my ears not to hear. I don't want to count the creaks but I do."

Such chilling details combine with touches of humor. Eventually, Jack and Ma plot a way for him to escape. Jack, who has never had his hair cut, is able to connect with a sympathetic stranger who grows suspicious of Nick's connection to him, and asks, "Is your little girl okay?" To which, Jack responds, in his head, "What little girl?"

Room succeeds in its voicing of Jack's world and his unique perspective on it. Donoghue crystallizes Jack's experiences in a minimalist way, and we learn more about him through his interactions with the world and others than through long soliloquies. Ma makes sure that her child has an understanding of language and sensory perception, a difficult task under the circumstances. She uses every book made available to them to school Jack, and is constantly devising games to keep his mind alert. As a result, Jack's reading ability and vocabulary outpace that of the average five-year-old. And yet, when they are finally rescued and returned to the outside world, he struggles to comprehend the basics, like stairways, choosing to navigate those by sitting and sliding up and down.

Room is and engaging and absorbing tale, but Donoghue falters when she tries to overlay the story with social commentary. When a television interviewer probes Ma with questions about her ordeal, she launches into a diatribe about slavery being common and the fact that, "in America, we've got more than twenty-five thousand prisoners in isolation cells…Some of them for more than twenty years." While it warms my prison activist heart to see such a statement in a novel about an abducted child, the speech feels awkward and forced, as if Donoghue is unsure that her story could sustain its force without making itself socially relevant. She is right to be concerned. Room is a riveting novel, and its narrator emerges as a memorable character; it was on the long list for the Booker Prize. Jack is not unique as a child narrator in literature—David Copperfield's early years come to mind. But Room's trouble lies precisely in the fact that Donoghue strains too hard to make Jack believable. His voice is authentic, but the larger story, placed so burdensomely upon his tiny shoulders, seems more gimmicky than engrossing; there's not much beyond the fact that a child narrates it. This is a book you might read to see the effect of Donoghue's craft, but it's not likely to be a book you return to.


This article shared 4048 times since Wed Nov 24, 2010
facebook twitter pin it google +1 reddit email

Out and Aging
Presented By

  ARTICLES YOU MIGHT LIKE

Gay News

Kara Swisher talks truth, power in tech at Chicago Humanities event 2024-03-25
- Lesbian author, award-winning journalist and podcast host Kara Swisher spoke about truth and power in the tech industry through the lens of her most recent book, Burn Book: A Tech Love Story, March 21 at First ...


Gay News

RuPaul finds 'Hidden Meanings' in new memoir 2024-03-18
- RuPaul Andre Charles made a rare Chicago appearance for a book tour on March 12 at The Vic Theatre, 3145 N. Sheffield Ave. Presented by National Public Radio station WBEZ 91.5 FM, the talk coincided with ...


Gay News

Without compromise: Holly Baggett explores lives of iconoclasts Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap 2024-03-04
- Jane Heap (1883-1964) and Margaret Anderson (1886-1973), each of them a native Midwesterner, woman of letters and iconoclast, had a profound influence on literary culture in both America and Europe in the early 20th Century. Heap ...


Gay News

There she goes again: Author Alison Cochrun discusses writing journey 2024-02-27
- By Carrie Maxwell When Alison Cochrun began writing her first queer romance novel in 2019, she had no idea it would change the course of her entire life. Cochrun, who spent 11 years as a high ...


Gay News

NATIONAL Women's college, banned books, military initiative, Oregon 2023-12-29
- After backlash regarding a decision to update its anti-discrimination policy and open enrollment to some transgender applicants, a Catholic women's college in Indiana will return to its previous admission policy, per The National Catholic Reporter. In ...


Gay News

NATIONAL School items, Miami attack, Elliot Page, Fire Island 2023-12-22
- In Virginia, new and returning members of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and Fairfax County School Board were inaugurated—with some school board members opting to use banned books on the topics of slavery and LGBTQ+ ...


Gay News

Chicago author's new guide leads lesbian fiction authors toward inspiration and publication 2023-12-07
- From a press release: Award-winning and bestselling lesbian fiction author Elizabeth Andre—the pen name for a Chicago-based interracial lesbian couple—has published her latest book, titled Self-Publishing Lesbian Fiction, Write Your ...


Gay News

NATIONAL Tenn. law, banned books, rainbow complex, journalists quit 2023-12-01
- Under pressure from a lawsuit over an anti-LGBTQ+ city ordinance, officials in Murfreesboro, Tennessee removed language that banned homosexuality in public, MSNBC noted. Passed in June, Murfreesboro's "public decency" ordinance ...


Gay News

BOOKS Lucas Hilderbrand reflects on gay history in 'The Bars Are Ours' 2023-11-29
- In The Bars Are Ours (via Duke University Press), Lucas Hilderbrand, a professor of film and media studies at the University of California-Irvine, takes readers on a historical journey of gay bars, showing how the venues ...


Gay News

BOOKS Owen Keehnen takes readers to an 'oasis of pleasure' in 'Man's Country' 2023-11-27
- In the book Man's Country: More Than a Bathhouse, Chicago historian Owen Keehnen takes a literary microscope to the venue that the late local icon Chuck Renslow opened in 1973. Over decades, until it was demolished ...


Gay News

Photographer Irene Young launches book with stellar concerts 2023-11-20
- "Something About the Women" was appropriately the closing song for two sold-out, stellar concerts at Berkeley's Freight & Salvage November 19, in celebration of the new book of the same name by Irene Young, the legendary ...


Gay News

Rustin film puts a gay pioneer into the spotlight 2023-11-16
- The story of activist Bayard Rustin is one that should be told in classrooms everywhere. Instead, because Rustin was an openly same-gender-loving man, his legacy has gone relatively unnoticed outside of LGBTQ+-focused history books. Netflix hopes ...


Gay News

Billy Masters: The times Streisand failed to make a splash 2023-11-13
- "Fame is a hollow trophy. No matter who you are, you can only eat one pastrami sandwich at a time."—Wise words from Barbra Streisand. You all know that Barbra Streisand's book is out. And I ...


Gay News

Charles Busch dishes on life as a storyteller 2023-11-09
- Performer/writer Charles Busch, who recently penned his autobiography, Leading Lady: A Memoir of a Most Unusual Boy, said that collecting his most precious and salient memories in a book felt "inevitable." "Storytelling is such an essential ...


Gay News

LGBT HISTORY PROJECT: Exploring 70 years of lesbian publications, from 1940s zines to modern glossy magazines 2023-11-02
- Since the '40s, lesbians have created a vibrant history of publications. From the exploration of daily lesbian life to literary and feminist pursuits, to the modern age of glossy magazines, for over 70 years, lesbians have ...


 


Copyright © 2024 Windy City Media Group. All rights reserved.
Reprint by permission only. PDFs for back issues are downloadable from
our online archives.

Return postage must accompany all manuscripts, drawings, and
photographs submitted if they are to be returned, and no
responsibility may be assumed for unsolicited materials.

All rights to letters, art and photos sent to Nightspots
(Chicago GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times (a Chicago
Gay and Lesbian News and Feature Publication) will be treated
as unconditionally assigned for publication purposes and as such,
subject to editing and comment. The opinions expressed by the
columnists, cartoonists, letter writers, and commentators are
their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Nightspots
(Chicago GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times (a Chicago Gay,
Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender News and Feature Publication).

The appearance of a name, image or photo of a person or group in
Nightspots (Chicago GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times
(a Chicago Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender News and Feature
Publication) does not indicate the sexual orientation of such
individuals or groups. While we encourage readers to support the
advertisers who make this newspaper possible, Nightspots (Chicago
GLBT Nightlife News) and Windy City Times (a Chicago Gay, Lesbian
News and Feature Publication) cannot accept responsibility for
any advertising claims or promotions.

 
 

TRENDINGBREAKINGPHOTOS







Sponsor


 



Donate


About WCMG      Contact Us      Online Front  Page      Windy City  Times      Nightspots
Identity      BLACKlines      En La Vida      Archives      Advanced Search     
Windy City Queercast      Queercast Archives     
Press  Releases      Join WCMG  Email List      Email Blast      Blogs     
Upcoming Events      Todays Events      Ongoing Events      Bar Guide      Community Groups      In Memoriam     
Privacy Policy     

Windy City Media Group publishes Windy City Times,
The Bi-Weekly Voice of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans Community.
5315 N. Clark St. #192, Chicago, IL 60640-2113 • PH (773) 871-7610 • FAX (773) 871-7609.