BAFFLING BINGO MYSTERY BOOK DAY: ROOM- REVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

WELCOME TO
BOOKIN' WITH BINGO'S
"BAFFLING BINGO DAY"
I'M EXCITED TO ANNOUNCE THIS THURSDAY'S
"BAFFLING BINGO DAY"
MYSTERY BOOK CHOICE IS.....

GIVEAWAY ENDED
ROOM
BY EMMA DONOGHUE
Shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize

ABOUT THE BOOK:

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough...not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, ROOM is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.

Take a virtual tour of Ma and Jack's 11x11 room on www.roomthebook.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Born in Dublin in 1969, Emma Donoghue is a writer of contemporary and historical fiction whose novels include the bestselling Slammerkin, The Sealed Letter, Landing, Life Mask, Hood, and Stirfry. Her story collections are The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits, Kissing the Witch, and Touchy Subjects. She also writes literary history, and plays for stage and radio. She lives in London, Ontario, with her partner and their two small children. For more information, go to www.emmadonoghue.com.

Audio and Video

"I was born in Ireland in 1969 and lived in England before moving to Canada. I write fiction (including the bestselling Slammerkin), drama for stage and radio, and literary history; Room is my seventh novel. Some of the places I found inspiration : Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), ), FeralChildren.com, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006), Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh (1856), John Fowles’s The Collector (1963), Anne Frank’s Diary (1947), Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), Terminator 2 : Judgment Day (1991), The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs (1966), but above all in conversation with my five-year-old son."

MY REVIEW:

Emma Donoghue's ROOM is an amazingly different kind of book that hit me unlike anything I have read in a very long time. I was concerned reading the first few pages as initially I thought that the five year old narrator’s way of expressing himself was too frustrating for me to get used to. However, I stuck with it and within a few minutes became intrigued at what Jack, the child, was saying. Jack referred to things like calling a pitifully wilted plant “Plant”, and his bed he called “Bed”, as if those were their names like his was Jack. The people he saw on television were “Only TV”, and you slowly realize that the likes of Bed and Plant are characters to him because this is Jack‘s world. These characters live in the only world Jack knows and so of course they have names just like his mother is “Ma”. This is Jack’s world and he literally believes that anything outside of ROOM is outer space.

Readers learn through Jack’s narration that “Ma” has been locked in ROOM for seven years. Thus one realizes that Jack has been in ROOM for all of his five years with neither ever having set foot outside of this eleven square foot converted shed in all that time. You ascertain that Ma was kidnapped as a young college student by a man whom she and Jack refer to as “Old Nick”. As details of Ma’s kidnapping and subsequent repeated rapes are revealed the horror of what is really going on goes far beyond a story told about just a five year old’s life. Readers are seeing the story through Jack’s eyes and so there is nothing graphic about the criminal assaults by “Old Nick”. However, the mere emotional tension as Jack counts and listens to how many times the bedsprings squeak when Old Nick visits at night allows one to feel the psychological terror Ma endures. Each and every evening that Old Nick comes in ROOM, Ma submits in order to keep her son safe and in return for Old Nick bringing them much needed bare bones supplies on Sundays. Ma realizes that they must find a way out for Jack’s safety if not her sanity.

Jack has no interaction with Old Nick as Ma wants to protect Jack from any contact with something so evil. But one night it all becomes too much for Ma and she realizes they must try and escape before Old Nick decides to do something to Jack. Her goal is to protect her son  and she worries about what could become of them and doesn’t let Old Nick see him lest Jack be tainted by his evil. 

Jack and Ma have such a strong bond and you have to admire Ma for her dedication to raising Jack as normally as possible in what is an anything but normal situation. And the suspense builds as Ma begins to plan an escape. The only world that Jack knows will be no more.

Looking at the world through Jack’s eyes is fascinating as well as frightening, whether in ROOM or not. What is Jack’s life really like in ROOM and how will that change if he leaves that prison he calls ROOM? What kind of life will Jack and Ma lead if they do escape? Will Jack be able to acclimate to the real world? 

It is no surprise that ROOM is on the short list for the Man Booker Prize to be announced in October. This psychological thriller will get inside your head as much as Jack will get inside your heart. Living in Jack’s world is disturbing while fascinating. The creativity with which Donoghue portrays such a disturbing and terrifying subject will draw you in and not let you alone even long after you have left the ROOM. She has created a believable portrait of what we sadly know from today’s headlines every day in our  WORLD could happen and does. I strongly recommend you get a copy of this BOOK and go to your ROOM and start reading right away. I am pretty sure you won’t stop until you finish the BOOK.

GIVEAWAY

THANKS TO MIRIAM AND THE GOOD FOLKS
AT THE HACHETTE BOOK GROUP,
I HAVE 3 COPIES OF THIS FASCINATING
NEW BOOK TO GIVE AWAY!

THE RULES:

--U.S. AND CANADIAN RESIDENTS ONLY
--NO P. O. BOXES, PLEASE
--INCLUDE EMAIL ADDRESS IN COMMENT
--ALL ENTRIES/COMMENTS MUST BE
SEPARATE IN ORDER TO COUNT
AS MORE THAN ONE ENTRY


HOW TO ENTER:

+1 ENTRY: COMMENT ON SOMETHING YOU FOUND INTERESTING ABOUT ROOM AND/OR AUTHOR EMMA DONOGHUE ABOVE THAT MADE YOU WANT TO WIN THIS BOOK

+1 MORE ENTRY: BLOG OR TWEET ABOUT THIS GIVEAWAY AND LEAVE A LINK I CAN FOLLOW IN THE ENTRY

+1 MORE ENTRY: COMMENT ON ONE WAY THAT YOU FOLLOW THIS BLOG.

+1 MORE ENTRY: COMMENT ON SOMETHING YOU FIND INTERESTING OVER AT EMMA DONOGHUE'S WEBSITE BY GOING HERE

GIVEAWAY ENDS AT
6 PM, EST, OCTOBER 27!

GOOD LUCK!