A suggestion for the Methadone List

ROOM, by Emma Donoghue

Jack is five years old, a lively, intelligent, curious little boy who lives with his mother in a place they call Room. He can count to 100, he knows how to read, and his favorite TV show is "Dora the Explorer".

At first Jack seems like a completely normal child, until you realize: he has never seen a car, or a tree, or a telephone, or a house, or a window, or a child his own age -- except on television. He has never felt the wind on his face, never jumped in a puddle of rainwater, never walked up a flight of stairs. Everything he has ever known in his entire life is right there in the eleven-foot-square confines of Room, where he and his Ma eat and sleep and bathe and play. This is Jack's reality. The world of Outside is so foreign to his experience that he doesn't even believe it actually exists.

ROOM is told entirely from five-year-old Jack's point of view. Seeing everything through his eyes, the horrific nature of their predicament is not apparent at first, but gradually the reader becomes aware of many small details that have added significance when viewed through adult eyes. There's no explicit sex and very little violence in this book, but it is still very chilling, even terrifying, in an understated sort of way.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who likes the depiction of children in the OUTLANDER books. Emma Donoghue has created a very memorable character in Jack, and an unforgettable story.

If any of you have read ROOM, I would be interested to hear what you thought of it.