ROOM BY EMMA DONOGHUE, PICADOR, $32.99.
The author has plucked a nightmare straight out of the nightly news – the abduction of a young girl and her incarceration in a locked room – and turned it into a novel as intriguing as it is chilling.
The story is told by the captive’s five-year-old son, Jack, fathered in captivity by a vile sexual predator they call Old Nick. Jack knows no world but “Room”, believing the sun, sky and people he sees on TV to be created images. It is the world outside that seems scary. This contrast between Jack’s happy innocence and Ma’s growing terror as she plots their escape gives the novel a thriller-like tension.
The author concedes her debt to real-life captives Elisabeth Fritzl and Natascha Kampusch. Don’t be scared off, you’ll find a strange tenderness and even humour.
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