O-mama - Opinionated Moms

• By Emma Donoghue • 10 Comments
• Tagged in: For Moms

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This riveting, harrowing novel has been receiving 5 star reviews from just about everyone.  It’s on the short list for the Man Booker Literary prize, and got raves from the New York Times.  I do agree with these reviews, which is why it’s my recommendation, but it’s not an easy read.  Don’t misunderstand, the narrator is a 5 year old boy, so no, it’s not difficult to understand intellectually, it’s just brutal and painful to read as a human being and especially as a mother.

The novel’s premise comes from something we read and hear about too often in the news: a woman has been abducted and kept in a converted garden shed measuring 12 x 12 for 7 years.  During this time, her captor and serial rapist has fathered her child who has been born and lived his entire life within the confines of this ROOM.  The story begins on Jack’s 5^th birthday. 

Because the story is told entirely from Jack’s perspective,   there are  no “sadistic” or voyeuristic thrills—no salacious details because Jack’s mother has done everything possible to allow Jack to have as “normal” an upbringing as she could within this tiny space.  And somehow, if we broaden our definitions of normal, and understand that of course Jack knows NOTHING else, his mother somehow succeeds.

She suffers through continued rapes and abuse to make sure that she has enough food and other various supplies for Jack’s well being.  We sense her frustrations and utter terror but only through Jack’s perceptions of her and the days that she is “Gone,” as he says—the days she can only lie in her bed and cry.  But these are rare days, for Jack is a happy boy.  His Ma and this Room are his everything.  He has no idea that anything else exists.  He believes the sun and the moon are God’s faces and that everything  on T.V. is Outer Space.  Ma tells him stories about the Berlin Wall and Alice in Wonderland and teaches him everything she knows.  They have Phys.Ed.  They have a few books which they read over and over.  They make crafts from trash.  Ma hides Jack when “Old Nick” visits at night, Jack only hears the bed creak.  He breastfeeds every day and has never had a haircut. 

I had this book in my stack for quite a while before I had the nerve to crack it open.  I knew how the REALITY of these scenarios made me feel—sick and horrified, afraid for my kids all the time—did I really want to read a book about that?  Should I force myself since some people don’t have the choice? 

Jack’s perspective is remarkable though.  Donoghue has somehow managed to evoke this child’s vision—his tunneled and utterly skewed vision of the world—of his ROOM--and made it joyful and completely uncontrived.  It’s never coy or even off-putting.  And somehow the novel becomes a true triumph of love over evil—and an incredibly unique and pure vision of the bond between a mother and her son.

So for Jack (spoiler alert) the bigger tragedy, in a way, comes after his escape and his and Ma’s subsequent rescue.  Imagine the shock and awe of leaving the womb, again.  When suddenly his insular world of Ma and only love and games becomes the real world with all its jagged edges and wide open, frightening expansiveness—Jack wishes only to go back to Room as his Ma struggles with him and with everyone around her who had believed her dead—and had no idea she had a child.  And of course, she must contend with those that are close to her who believe Jack to be, at least in some ways, the child of a monster.

The whirlwind of reporters and frenzy of media surrounding Ma and Jack after their release borders on the absurd, and is of course, truly frightening for Jack.  But they persevere, with the help of Ma’s family and simply continue on in their struggle to cope.  At one point Ma appears on an Oprah type show in an effort to tell the story once to end the constant barrage.  The host of the show comments on her continued nursing of her son; and in an almost comedic moment Ma asks her, utterly amazed, if she honestly believes that that is truly the most shocking part of her story. 

The novel is gripping.  It has tremendous momentum, which is amazing given the circumstances.  Ma is a formidable character—a wondrous force—seen through the eyes of her son as she lives through our worst nightmares—with a smile on her face—a smile for Jack.