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The Basics: It’s the old fairy tale: Once upon a time an ogre locked a princess away in a tower for seven years. Except in this case Once Upon A Time is Right Goddamn Now, the ogre is a creepy bachelor, the princess is an unlucky college kid, and the tower is a sound-proofed garden shed turned dungeon. And then you thank your lucky stars kids have the good sense not to recognize just how fucked-up these fairy scenarios are.
It’s especially good news for Jack, who was born into the middle of this story. Having lived all five of his years in Room, he’s content with the world, which as far as he is concerned is 121 square feet. But Jack’s frustrated Ma remembers a world outside of Room—and as Jack gets bigger and their jailer gets less stable, Ma knows they’ve got to get out. But how do you explain to someone who has never been there that there is an Outside, and the things he sees on TV are real?
This Book Is A Facehugger: It pretty much leaped out of the book drop bin and wrapped itself around my head—and I’m still trying to figure out why. I think it’s because, for all the uncomfortable true-crime skin-crawling WTF plausibility of the premise, it’s actually a speculative fiction book in disguise.
Consider: Part 1 lets you observe a strange two-person culture. It’s informed by the mainstream American culture Ma remembers and what they see on their tiny TV—but it’s also unique to these people, with its own rituals and mythos. Since you probably know the origins of a lot of the mythos Ma has built, you’ll never see it with the same one-sided view Jack does, but you do get immersed in a new perspective where, to paraphrase, The Strange Is Familiar And The Familiar Is Strange.
And then Part 2 is a classic Stranger In A Strange Land, where Jack tries to learn how to navigate outside of Room.
And When I Say “Navigate,” I Am Speaking Literally: Of course, even people from wildly different cultures start out with at least some basic things in common. Developmental milestones, for example. Jack missed a lot of these: he tends to walk into tables because he never learned to judge distances, he is startled by every strange noise, he has trouble knowing when someone is talking to him, and he takes a while to parse human features and faces. There’s also an excellently underplayed bit of dialogue showing that Jack, who has only ever talked to Ma before, is not entirely sure how to refer to her in the third-person. So yeah, Jack’s a bit more of an alien than most. At least when you go to a different country, you don’t have to stop and figure out that the people down the street are not tiny fairies, they’re just far away.
And Speaking Of Fairies: I’m not just being glib about this as a “modern fairy tale.” Donoghue is extremely conscious of it. Characters take on curiously story-like qualities—you never find out Ma’s name, because she’s Ma. Their jailer doesn’t get a “real” name, either: he is Old Nick. (BECAUSE HE’S THE DEVIL, GET IT?) Jack and the Beanstalk is a constant motif. It makes sense—and interestingly, so do the suggestions that Jack is, at least figuratively, the product of some kind of immaculate conception. (Ma firmly insists that “Jack is nobody’s son but mine.”)
It makes it even more evident that this is speculative fiction, something that would attract me, drag me through to the end, and surprise me with how darn much I enjoyed it. But then, I do like fairies and aliens.
Unintended Side Effect Of This Book: I am now far more tolerant of Dora the Explorer than I ever used to be.
It’s especially good news for Jack, who was born into the middle of this story. Having lived all five of his years in Room, he’s content with the world, which as far as he is concerned is 121 square feet. But Jack’s frustrated Ma remembers a world outside of Room—and as Jack gets bigger and their jailer gets less stable, Ma knows they’ve got to get out. But how do you explain to someone who has never been there that there is an Outside, and the things he sees on TV are real?
This Book Is A Facehugger: It pretty much leaped out of the book drop bin and wrapped itself around my head—and I’m still trying to figure out why. I think it’s because, for all the uncomfortable true-crime skin-crawling WTF plausibility of the premise, it’s actually a speculative fiction book in disguise.
Consider: Part 1 lets you observe a strange two-person culture. It’s informed by the mainstream American culture Ma remembers and what they see on their tiny TV—but it’s also unique to these people, with its own rituals and mythos. Since you probably know the origins of a lot of the mythos Ma has built, you’ll never see it with the same one-sided view Jack does, but you do get immersed in a new perspective where, to paraphrase, The Strange Is Familiar And The Familiar Is Strange.
And then Part 2 is a classic Stranger In A Strange Land, where Jack tries to learn how to navigate outside of Room.
And When I Say “Navigate,” I Am Speaking Literally: Of course, even people from wildly different cultures start out with at least some basic things in common. Developmental milestones, for example. Jack missed a lot of these: he tends to walk into tables because he never learned to judge distances, he is startled by every strange noise, he has trouble knowing when someone is talking to him, and he takes a while to parse human features and faces. There’s also an excellently underplayed bit of dialogue showing that Jack, who has only ever talked to Ma before, is not entirely sure how to refer to her in the third-person. So yeah, Jack’s a bit more of an alien than most. At least when you go to a different country, you don’t have to stop and figure out that the people down the street are not tiny fairies, they’re just far away.
And Speaking Of Fairies: I’m not just being glib about this as a “modern fairy tale.” Donoghue is extremely conscious of it. Characters take on curiously story-like qualities—you never find out Ma’s name, because she’s Ma. Their jailer doesn’t get a “real” name, either: he is Old Nick. (BECAUSE HE’S THE DEVIL, GET IT?) Jack and the Beanstalk is a constant motif. It makes sense—and interestingly, so do the suggestions that Jack is, at least figuratively, the product of some kind of immaculate conception. (Ma firmly insists that “Jack is nobody’s son but mine.”)
It makes it even more evident that this is speculative fiction, something that would attract me, drag me through to the end, and surprise me with how darn much I enjoyed it. But then, I do like fairies and aliens.
Unintended Side Effect Of This Book: I am now far more tolerant of Dora the Explorer than I ever used to be.
