Ti | Book Chatter

This weekend hasn’t been terribly relaxing. For one, The Boy came down with a very weird, chest abnormality on Thursday. After doing fitness testing at school that involved a number of push-ups, a bone (rib?), along with his sternum, popped out of his chest. It was huge and pressing against his lungs so he couldn’t breathe. After urgent care and a trip to his doctor, we still don’t know what it is. We are waiting for a specialist referral to determine what can be done. Right now, the swelling has gone done a little bit so he can breathe a bit easier, but basketball or any activity for that matter is out right now.

In other news…

We’ve been on the fence for a while about getting another pet after our beloved kitty passed away two years ago. Well, I think we are ready for a pet so we’ve been looking at dogs. Today we hit a basset hound rescue and let me tell you, you would have laughed like hell because we must have looked so odd there.

The Girl was completely overwhelmed by the number of dogs at this sanctuary. There were well over 100 hounds and they all came running towards us. Most were loves but some were not and we were covered in mud and other things while The Girl screamed bloody murder and hopped up onto tables and crates. Plus, it was rainy and cold.

I don’t see how anyone could possibly find a dog there. Once you found one you sort of liked, there were like 50 other dogs upon you and they were relentless. I have such a headache from the experience. Maybe we should just stick to cats.

Right now, a lady from another rescue is about to come and look at our house and yard situation. Mainly to see what we need to do to the yard because it backs to open land, etc. Plus we are gone a lot during the week so we definitely need a certain type of dog. Anyway, getting the house prepared is a start. It could turn out that we are just cat people and always will be, but I’d love to find the right dog and make it work.

As for the rest of the day, I plan to take care of The Boy, down a few aspirin for the pounding headache and curl-up with Hating Olivia which I picked up last night and could not put down.

Since I was doing so much this weekend, I am already feeling the dread of Monday. I hate that.

What are you doing today?

Room
By Emma Donoghue
Little Brown & Company
September 2010
321pp

The Short of It:

Room boasts an original premise but falls flat from overly simplistic writing and one-dimensional characters.

The Rest of It:

*No Spoilers*

For those who are not aware of the premise, a young woman is abducted and forced to live in a room that is only 11 x 11 in size. There, she gives birth to a baby boy by the name of Jack. As Jack grows-up, his main source of information comes from his mother and what she chooses to teach him, as well as the knowledge he obtains from the few amenities afforded to him while in captivity.

The story is told from Jack’s point of view. This works to a degree, in that it makes it easier to read. At five years of age, Jack doesn’t fully understand what is going on. As a reader, I was comforted by his innocence but also felt an overwhelming sense of sadness about their situation. In this sense, using Jack as the storyteller worked.

We’re shown early on that Jack is an exceptional child. His vocabulary, for a child in his particular situation is quite advanced. This is where I had problems with believability. The conversations that he has with his mother (only known as Ma) don’t match his every day thought processes. He thinks as a five-year-old would, but there were spots where he speaks like a much older child. This struck me as odd and pulled me out of the narrative many times.

As we get further into the story, I wanted to know more about Ma. I wanted to hear her point of view but we never get that. In fact, her real name is never revealed. She is just known as “Ma” and to me, not giving her an identity seemed almost criminal.

Without giving away the plot, I will say that the second half of the book is quite different from the first half. Whatever pulled me in during that first half, was gone by the second half. I felt as if the author threw things in to make the story more plausible. She was correct to do it, as plausibility is key to a story like this, but what she tossed in wasn’t fully fleshed out. It seemed formulaic to me and not written from the heart. Because of it, I lost that connection to the characters and in a book that only has a character list of just a few people, that’s not good.

To sum it up, Donoghue did an excellent job of creating the room itself. Deciding what it would contain, where things were placed, considering all of the logistics such as how to deal with the food supply issue or health related issues, etc. I felt as if I were in that room with them. She also did a great job with the day-to-day activities that Ma and Jack engaged in. However, the story petered out for me in that second half. Jack seemed to lose his voice and Ma, who I really wanted to care about, became unlikable.

I think I would have liked this book quite a bit more had it been told from Ma’s point of view. It would have been a different book for sure, but I think it would have had the depth that this book lacked.