Room

Room is a novel by the Irish-Canadian writer Emma Donoghue, published in 2010. It is narrated by a five-year-old boy called Jack, and it reached the Booker Prize shortlist in its first year.

Jack has lived his whole life in a single room, which he calls Room, where he shares a bed with his mother, whom he calls Ma. There is a small kitchen, a bathroom, a wardrobe and a TV, and Jack believes that Room and the things inside it are the only things that are real.

Ma, who is twenty-six and has been held there for years, keeps Jack occupied with games, exercises and routines, and she has let him believe that the people he sees on television are not real. Jack does not yet know that he and his mother are being kept.

Donoghue writes the novel from inside Jack's limited vocabulary and understanding, so the reader works out much of what is happening before he does. It is a standalone novel, and it was adapted into a film in 2015.