I’m still working through the amazing and extensive list of reading suggestions left on this post from ages ago from you all. “Room” by Emma Donoghue was one of them–and I love this book.

It’s also been at least a decade since I posted my last book review, so: the jig’s up. Let’s read!

The subject matter of this book is quite dark: a 19-year-old woman is kidnapped from her college campus as she heads to the library, and is taken by force to a sound-proof shed in a man’s back yard. She tries to escape through the skylight (but the glass is unbreakable), by digging through the floor (but there’s a chain link fence underneath) and by attacking her captor when she hears the ‘beep’ indicating he’s entering the security code–but nothing works. She is imprisoned there for 7 years, and a couple years into her captivity, gives birth to a son on the rug: Jack, the narrator of this story.

When the story begins, five-year-old Jack is living in what he calls “Room,” not knowing that there is anything outside the cork-tiled 11 by 11 foot space he and his mother share. They are together constantly, his Ma teaching him how to read, engaging him in “Phys Ed” to keep him active and moving, and a plethora of imaginative games. There are 5 books that they read over and over again, and Jack loves watching “Dora the Explorer” on their TV. Once a week, their captor “Old Nick” brings them some groceries and what Jack knows as “Sundaytreat,” which could be a piece of chocolate, a pair of jeans, or a bottle of pain-killers for his Ma, whose teeth are rotting and causing her daily pain.

His Ma protects him fiercely. Every night when Old Nick comes, she hides Jack in the wardrobe. Old Nick knows that Jack is there but has never seen his face, and even though Jack can hear him, he wonders just how real Old Nick is. In fact, the boundaries between imagination and reality are a huge theme in this book: Jack sees things on TV, but thinks they are pretend. Reality for him is the stain on the rug where he was born, or the lollipop he gets for Sundaytreat. Jack personalizes everything and has relationships with the scant objects in the room like his favorite “meltedy spoon.”

I was a little more than nervous going in to this book. I can’t read or watch anything too violent or dark, because images get stuck in my head and stay with me for so long. I tried to read “The Lovely Bones” but couldn’t do it even though it was very well written (and still have a horrible imprint of the first few pages in my brain) ; I couldn’t do “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” series even though it was also very well written and engaging. But this book, I devoured with no reservations. The facts presented are dark and disturbing–there’s not getting around that–but seeing it from the naive eyes of a 5 year old makes this book a fresh, lively, and frequently funny read.

I was also wondering during the first few pages if this unique child’s point of view would get tiresome as the story progressed. But it doesn’t! You are able to interpret what’s really happening even when Jack doesn’t, and the added perspective of his adds a charm and a beauty that make the book uplifting and wonderful. Unbelievably, this book is tender and endearing and lifted my mood when I picked it up.

I won’t tell you what happens–and it had me on the edge of my seat–but ultimately it’s not a downer. Promise. Pick this up, and hopefully you’ll love it like I did.

And now for a pause in the pregnancy and baby talk! We’ll hop back on that train first thing next week, but in the meantime I have more fabulous books to share with you.

For the first few months of 2012, I was absolutely caught up in a series of books by Cynthia Voigt called the “Tillerman Cycle” (alternately called “series” or “saga”). These books are technically young adult literature, but I believe they are literature for all. They have made a huge impression on me. And yes, this is the same author who wrote Jackaroo, but these books couldn’t be more different.

The first book, which won the Newberry prize, is called Homecoming. When I jumped into these books, I vaguely wondered if they were going to be the kind of like the Boxcar children series, since the premise of the first book is similar: a group of 4 siblings (2 girls, 2 boys) making it on their own. In Homecoming, the 4 Tillerman kids are waiting in the car for their mom to return from her shopping trip at the mall. As they wait in the hot parking lot and the hours slip by, they start to wonder what might have happened to her. After spending the night there, they realize they’ve been abandoned. The oldest girl, pre-teen Dicey, hatches a plan to travel to their great aunt’s house, and with only a few dollars to their name, the kids set out walking cross-country on a long journey, struggling to feed themselves along the way for as little money as possible, finding places to sleep where they won’t be bothered or picked up by the police (who–they’re convinced–would send them straight into the foster-care system and split them up). Let me assure you–these books are nothing like the Boxcar children series. Voigt delves deeply into the minds and characters of these kids. Their bravery, their mind-games, their frustrations, thoughts, struggles for control–it’s about the human experience, and how we relate to each other. It’s about love, compromises, determination, hard work, failure.

The following books in the series each center on a character who in some way or another is related to the Tillermans. Dicey’s Song continues the series with a focus on Dicey’s new life on their grandmother’s farm, her foray into school as a bright but sullen loner, her belief that hard work will make everything okay, and her efforts to keep her siblings on track. A Solitary Blue tells the story of Dicey’s friend/boyfriend Jeff, whose mother left him and his father to go save the world, and whose betrayal has left deep scars. The Runner goes back in time to the 60s, telling the story of uncle Bullet’s high school years as a cross-country runner, who went on to die in Vietnam. Come a Stranger focuses on Mina, Dicey’s high school friend, and her struggles and triumphs as an African-American woman who wants to be a dancer in the mostly white world of classical ballet, and her efforts to understand her place in history and as a unique individual. Seventeen Against the Dealer returns to the character of Dicey, now 21 years old and a college drop-out, as she tries to start her own business and become a boat-builder.

Each book is a treasure. Each book is a window into a soul, the story that shaped that soul, and the history of a family you will seriously love.

I only have one book left to read–Sons from Afar–and I can’t wait!