“Room:” A Story of Captivity Told From a Five-Year Old Boy’s Perspective

From The Baochi Book Collection

Jaycee Dugard was kidnapped at age eleven in 1991 and held in captivity for eighteen years. During that time, Dugard was raped repeatedly by her captor – Phillip Craig Garrido — and she gave birth to two daughters. In Austria, Elisabeth Fritzl experienced similar atrocities as a prisoner of her own father, Josef Fritzl, who locked her up for twenty-four years in the family’s basement. By the time Elisabeth emerged, she was forty-two and a mother of seven, all the result of rape by her father.

The revelations of these kidnappings have horrified the world. Details have emerged through the media, and Jaycee Dugard published a memoir about her ordeal. But very little is known about the children born to these women in captivity. That’s where Emma Donoghue’s novel, Room, fills in the blanks. The book, a fictitious account of a young woman held captive for several years, is told from the perspective of the woman’s five-year old son, Jack, conceived and born in the little room that serves as their home and prison.

At first, I had trouble with the child’s point of view. The beginning pages of Room are devoted to Jack’s simple descriptions of the everyday routines he shares with his mother in the limited space of their room. It’s a tedious recounting designed to convey that these small, mundane activities are the whole of the little boy’s experiences.

As the novel progresses, we gain access to an adult’s perspective through Jack’s conversations with his mother. The mature insights deepened my interest in the story and eventually, I became more attached to Jack and his voice.

Room is about celebrating life no matter how small or limited the life. Since it’s 2010 publication, the novel has generated a lot of buzz and positive reviews, most of it well-deserved. But I wouldn’t go as far as saying Room is “remarkable,” as some reviewers describe it. It’s a pretty good read, but it didn’t wow me as expected.