No Room for More

Room by Emma Donoghue
Fiction (Older Teens and Up)

This was one of the most affecting books I've read in a long time.

Told from the perspective of a five-year old boy who has lived his entire life in one room.  His mother was kidnapped as a college student and has been living in a shed, a room, for 7 years. 

The creativity of the writing, of the total innocent perspective of a child in such a horrific situation was unnerving and the entire story was a mystery.  Since we, as the reader, see everything through a child's eyes, we know something is not right but it takes a long time to put together the pieces.  The writer unveils the story as slowly as the rings of an onion peeling away, with each slice more painful and heart-wrenching.  The second part of the book was more tragic but also exhilarating and suspenseful.

So, when I said earlier that it was an affecting book, that's really the best way to describe it.  The book made me feel all the way through.  It was a subtle, invisible tug on my emotions--hope, despair, anger, excitement, dread, horror and, strangely, hilarity in parts.  By the end, I was an emotional wreck--exhausted.  Emma Donoghue knows just which buttons to push.  Thank you, Ms. D., I loved it and come back to it time and again in my mind without realizing it.  It is a book that will stay with you for a long time.