If
you ever intend to read this book, skip this entry because it will contain
spoilers.
I have seen things about this book since its publication in 2010. when it
was Amazon's Best of the Month for September of that year.
I knew vaguely what it was about but none of the particulars about why this
woman and her son were living all alone in a room. I didn't know if it
was regular fiction of science fiction.
I finally got it as an audio book and it has been sitting in my iPod
for a
couple of years now and the other day I decided to start listening to
it. The more I got into it, the more gripping it became. I got no sleep
last night because I was up until 4 a.m. trying to get to the end.
As I said in my book review, "If I had not read
this as an audio book, I'm not sure I would have finished it, but voice of
Michal Friedman (who, sadly, died in 2011 during a cesarean to deliver her
twins) was so perfect as 5 year old Jack that I had to stick with it to see
how it turns out."
The story starts on Jack's 5th birthday and how
amazed he is that when he went to bed he was 4 and when he woke up he was 5.
Through Jack's commentary on his life with Ma you come to realize that the
two of them have been locked -- forever, for Jack -- in an 11' x 11'
windowless room
and the only other person who ever enters is "Old Nick," who comes at night
after Jack has gone to sleep to bring them supplies and Sunday treats.
Jack doesn't know it but Nick kidnapped Ma when
she was a 19 year old student and has held her captive in a back yard bunker
all these years. Jack is her second child, the first having died at
birth (we learn this late in the book, not from Jack). Ma does all she can
to make Jack's life as normal as it can be, and makes certain that he is
always asleep inside the wardrobe before Nick comes in to rape her at night.
(And we never hear this from Ma's voice, but only Jack's feeling, hearing
the squeak of the bed before Old Nick finally leaves)
I thought often about how kids accept their lives
as they are because they don't know any different. I was 10 years old,
for example, before I was diagnosed with amblyopia (lazy eye blindness).
I just assumed that everyone had one good eye and one bad eye, so it never
occurred to me to tell my mother that I couldn't really see very well out of
my right eye. I wonder about my Compassion kids living in abject poverty ...
do they just assume this is the normal way people live because everyone
around them lives the same way?
Eventually Ma can't stand it any more and concocts
a plot to escape. It will require Jack to be brave because the plan
won't work without his cooperation. She is to make Nick think that
Jack died and that he has to take him somewhere and bury him (not in the
back yard, where he buried the first baby). Jack is wrapped tightly in
a rug and they practice over and over how he is to be still while Nick
throws him in the back of a truck and how he is to escape when the truck
comes to a stop and what he needs to do then.
This is where the book starts to lose its
credibility. Jack, who has memorized every book he owns, including
Alice in Wonderland, can't seem to remember the 9 steps he is supposed to
take to get away from Nick. But it does work, even though he can't
speak to the first person he sees because he has never spoken to anyone but
Ma before.
The arrest of Nick, discovery of the bunker, and
release of Ma happen very quickly and the second part of the book concerns
their integration back into society.
Jack has never seen grass or trees or birds or insects, he has never seen
another child, he doesn't know the simplest things such as how to walk down
stairs. He thinks Dora the Explorer
(his "best friend" from TV) is as real as the children he sees around him.
Everything is new to him, and the reaction of those around him, from the
therapists to his relatives is totally unbelievable.
The therapists
treat him as if he understands all the complicated lingo they toss at him,
and his grandmother is frustrated with him because he won't "go out and
play" or "make friends with another child." She can't seem to
understand these are foreign concepts to him. His uncle is angry with
him for "stealing" his favorite book from a book store. Jack saw his
favorite book on display, figured it had come from "room" and packed it in
his backpack to take home--not realizing that there was more than one copy
of that book and it needed to be paid for. Uncle Paul gets furious
with him.
Grandma seems more upset at what her friends are going to think about Ma
still nursing 5 year old Jack than about how to comfort her daughter after 7
years of incarceration. Her father won't even look at the boy because
of the way he was conceived.
There is a video interview in here somewhere
which makes Fox news look good. Even FOX wouldn't ask the terribly
stupid and insensitive
questions this interviewer did!
As for Ma's actions, I won't totally reveal what
happens, but the Ma of Part 1, who lives to protect Jack would never have
done what she does in Part 2.
I might have stopped reading this when it began
to get into the realm of unbelievability, but I'm glad that the narrator was
so good because it kept me going (until 4 a.m. this morning). I was
wondering how they could end this plot which seemed to be going on without
purpose for so long. But author Donoghue found the perfect way to end
it, so I'm glad I stuck with it.
