Emma Donoghue: Room

'Room'

'Room' is a novel by Irish-Canadian writer Emma Donoghue. Published in 2010, it was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, became an international best seller and is described as 'claustrophobic, controversial [and] brilliant'. It's been a book that I'd been meaning to read for a couple of years but had never gotten round to buying a copy, so I was particularly glad when I finally managed to get my hands on it.

'Room' is the story of Jack, a 5 year-old boy who lives with his Ma in a single locked room containing a small kitchen, bath and toilet, wardrobe, bed and TV set. At the beginning of the book, Jack, having never experienced anything else, believes that he, Ma, Room and the things it contains are 'real', whilst the rest of the world only exists in television. Unwilling to disappoint Jack with knowledge of a life she cannot give him, Ma does not correct him. Instead, she tries to keep him happy and healthy, both mentally and physically, by limiting TV time, eating well-balanced meals, exercising, and maintaining good physical & oral hygiene. The only other person Jack ever sees is 'Old Nick', who visits Room whilst Jack is asleep in the wardrobe, bringing supplies and talking to Ma.

Jack is the narrator of the piece and we see his world through his eyes. Due to his youth, it isn't immediately obvious how or why Jack and Ma live in this single room, though it is instantly clear that something is wrong. And we're right; it's soon revealed that Old Nick kidnapped Ma when she was nineteen years old and has kept her imprisoned in Room for the past seven years; Jack is the product of Old Nick's unwanted advances on her. 

The book is a story of 2 halves, with the first half detailing the routine of Jack and Ma's lives in Room, before their eventual escape. Their lives are mundane and repetitive, but through Jack, Donoghue manages to make it that the book doesn't feel so to the reader. The escape itself happens in the middle of the novel - perhaps a strange place for what could be seen as the climax of the book - and it ran away from me a little bit (no pun intended). It was heart-stopping, but seemed a little contrived. After the escape, we see Jack's first few weeks in 'Outside' and his discomfort at leaving behind everything he knew and its perceived safety. This section of the book is both funny and agonising as Jack realises that the world doesn't consist of just him and Ma. 

With such a horrific initial setting, 'Room' could easily have turned into voyeuristic piece of torture fiction, but the result is surprisingly tender and moving. The use of Jack's innocent perspective is a marvel - his childlike observations reveal the sinister nature of his and Ma's situation without having to bear the weight of it's horror, making the subject matter strangely bearable and the reader able to focus on other aspects of the story. It's testament to Donoghue's writing skill that she was able to convincingly maintain the childlike tone of the narration all the way through the book and create a story that is full of humour despite it's bleak context. There are small niggles; Jack's naivete in the second half of the book as he begins to interact with the world and observe other people in it sometimes move into adult satire, but this is a minor gripe.

Other than Jack's narration, one of the most amazing facets of the book is the character of Ma and the relationship she and Jack have, as two people who only have each other. Ma is the ultimate hero, strong and resilient in the face of suffering, striving to do the best she can for her son, including giving in to Old Nick to ensure Jack's safety. Though, she is only human, and does understandably give into her despair on occasion. The book celebrates the relationship between mother and child, and it's interesting to see how Jack and Ma's relationship changes once they have left the claustrophobia of Room; Ma tries to regain a sense of herself outside of being a mother, whilst Jack struggles with the idea that there are other demands on Ma's time and that she has needs outside of him.

'Room' is an utterly compelling read, and though the subject matter is difficult, the book is never depressing. Instead, it is entirely hopeful and speaks of the resilience of the human spirit. Definitely recommended.

8/10.

Jonas Jonasson: The Hundred-Year-Old Man who climbed out of the Window and Disappeared

'The Hundred-Year-Old Man who climbed out of the Window and Disappeared'

It's taken a while, (recently my lunch hours have been taken up with meeting people, rather than reading; actual real people, rather than fictional!) but here it is: my review of Jonas Jonasson's 'The Hundred-Year-Old Man who climbed out of the Window and Disappeared'.

The book follows the story of Allan Karlsson who, on his 100th birthday, does just as the title suggests. Whilst escaping from the old-people's home, he happens upon and steals a suitcase containing fifty million crowns belonging to the infamous gang 'Never Again', and goes on the run. 

Allan is no simple centenarian. Upbeat, amoral and staunchly non-political - like an elderly Forrest Gump - Allan lives by the motto that 'things are what they are and what will be will be', and manages to successfully bundle his way through the chase, gathering around him motley crew of cohorts, including an elephant, and evading capture by both 'Never Again' and the police. 

The story is a dark, comedic farce, requiring the reader to suspend belief as they follow the various - and numerous - twists and turns of the plot. Amidst this quirky, glorified car chase are flashbacks to Allan's past, and how he found himself involved in some of the most influential moments in history: from saving General Franco's life, to accidentally inventing the atom bomb (and informing both sides of how to do it), to comforting a young Kim Jong-Il after he learns 'Uncle' Stalin's death.

Personally, I found the narrative of Allan's past the most engaging. There's something absurd in Jonasson's depictions of some of the most important political moments in history - the chapter of Allan's dinner at the Kremlin and the portrayal of Stalin as a changeable, fickle, man-child is brilliant - and though the plot is utterly ridiculous, each historic event moves from one to the other, resolving each of the previous, that it's quite satisfying to watch it unfold.

The present day plot goes on a little too long, to my mind; the joke can only go so far, and it wore a little thin. Also, Allan comes across as fairly unsympathetic in these sections. He does, after all, end up murdering 2 members of the biker gang, and with a largely ho-hum attitude, though this is perhaps not helped by the simple, literal writing style which offer little to no description or insight into Allan's mind. The ending also felt rushed to me, and altogether too neat, with Allan  getting away with murder, keeping the money and riding off into the sunset with his new friends. But, I did like how the book ended with the final instalment of the flashbacks, explaining how Allan ended up in the old-people's home and taking us right up to the moment where he decided to climb out of the window at the very beginning of to book, bringing us full-circle. 

Ultimately, for me, the book didn't live up to it's hype; I found it funny, but not in the laugh-out-loud way I'd expected, though I imagine fans of Douglas Adams would like it alot.

7/10.

Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale

'The Handmaid's Tale'

The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel by Margaret Atwood, first published in 1985. A firm favourite of high school curriculums, the book is set in the near future and tells the story of the totalitarian Republic of Gilead, a militant theocracy which lies within the borders of what was once The United States. Gilead's laws are inspired by the old-testament and see society divided up into a strict, compulsory hierarchy with women as domestic second-class citizens.

In this world, women are colour coded to denote their social status; Wives wear blue, like the Virgin Mary, Daughters are in White, Handmaids - fertile women who provide babies to the childless elite - dress all in Red, and Marthas - household maids and cooks - wear Green.

The story's protagonist is Offred, a Handmaid assigned to a Commander of The Sons of Jacob, Gilead's ruling class, though, of course, this is not her real name. Instead it denotes the name of the Commander she is assigned to, literally meaning 'Of Fred'. Our narrator describes her life as a Handmaid, detailing her day-to-day duties which include mass prayer meetings, public births and 'The Ceremony', where she lies between the legs of the Wife, as if they were one person, whilst the Commander attempts to impregnate her.

Throughout the novel, Offred struggles to reconcile her past with her current existence, and the narrative is interspersed with memories of her college years with her friend Moira and her life with husband Luke and their young daughter. His having been married before, Luke and Offred's marriage was considered adulterous under the new regime, and Luke is now missing, presumed dead, and their daughter has been seized and placed with a childless couple.

The beginning of the book is quite slow with much of the action taking place in Offred's mind. The narrative jumps back and forth into Offred's memories, similar to a stream of consciousness, and initially I found it quite hard going. However, this is purposeful; the narrative is intentionally sluggish and introspective in order for the reader to get a sense of the monotony of Offred's life. But, once context has been established and the present-day story gets going, the book really builds in to something great.

The book is extremely well written, though the literary style can take a little while to get used to due to the marked lack of quotation marks in Offred's memories. There are a lot of theories floating around as to why this is, my personal favourite being that the pre-revolutionary past is no longer considered legitimate or quotable in the new society. Atwood's narrative is also extremely blunt in places; she doesn't waste time on filler text. Everything has a purpose and much of the prose has a depth to it you don't expect from such a brusque writing style. Again, this was arresting to begin with, but it's ultimately one of the best features of the book.

But what really holds the reader's attention is the terrifyingly bleak yet utterly recognisable world Margaret Atwood has created; it is perversely fascinating. Atwood has long maintained that The Handmaid's Tale is not science fiction, rather 'speculative literature', and I have to agree with her. Nothing in the book is futuristic or seems a long way off, especially when contemporary news is flooded with stories of religious militants and female subjugation. It still feels inherently relevant, even 30 years after it's release.

This is not the book to read if you want easy entertainment, and though it is a brilliant book, it would be wrong to say I enjoyed The Handmaid's Tale. Rather, it affected me deeply, and it is an experience I would definitely recommend to others. 

9/10.

S J Watson: Before I go to Sleep

'Before I go to Sleep'

Imagine waking up every morning not knowing who you are. Imagine that someone else has to remind you of your identity, your past and the people you love, every single day. What if they aren't telling you the truth?

That's the premise of my most recent read, Before I go to Sleep by S J Watson.

The book begins with it's protagonist, Christine Lucas, waking up in bed with a strange man. Carefully extricating herself from him, Christine heads for the bathroom, and is horrified to find that the face in the mirror is much older than it ought to be. The man in the bed wakes and introduces himself as Ben, her husband of 20 years, and patiently explains that she was in a car accident which resulted in a severe and rare case of amnesia, something she will forget all over again once she falls asleep.

On the advice of the Doctor she has been seeing behind Ben's back, Christine has been keeping a journal, though Dr Nash has to call her everyday to remind her where it is. In an attempt to link one day to the next, Christine records her daily movements, conversations and the memories they trigger, and begins to piece together her life before the accident. Her journal gives a very different explanation to the one her husband has been telling her, and even more disturbing are the three words inscribed at the very front of her journal: 'DON'T TRUST BEN'.

The concept of the book is great and I loved the air of suspicion, confusion and desperation it instilled not only in Christine, but also myself. Towards the end, I read the book so quickly that I had to go back and read it again. So urgent was my need to find out the truth that my eyes flew over the pages, only absorbing the main details and not taking any notice of the writing style and pacing. And it was certainly worth the re-read.

Before I go to Sleep is a clever psychological thriller, filled with twists and turns which keep the reader in a state of flux. I thought I had the plot nailed down a number of times only to change my mind and then be proven entirely wrong at the end. You never quite know who or what to believe, and Christine is about as unreliable a narrator as they come, partly due to the majority of the novel's narrative coming from her journal, the validity of which she consistently questions, and, as it turns out, has been heavily edited by Ben. But of course, we don't find that out until later.

I really liked how the book's narrative was arranged, moving from present-day to Christine's journal as she rediscovers it, each entry bringing us ever closer to the truth of her situation and the circumstances that caused it. The journal sections were sometimes repetitive to read, but that is most likely intentional; Christine would have been unable to remember writing any of the previous entries and would have recorded her thoughts and feelings as if they were new to her. 

I did have a slight issue with the very end of the novel, after the shocking, violent confrontation. Christine begins to regain some of her memory, newly able to recall sections of her past which had previously been lost to her; her Doctor suggests that having experienced another trauma might be reversing the effects of the first one, to some extent. To me, that just sounds implausible, but as Watson is the one that worked in the NHS, I shan't argue. Luckily, he avoids a fairytale ending: the book closes with Christine falling asleep, not knowing whether her improving memory is permanent, or whether she will wake up as she has done for the past 20 years - with no recollection of who or where she is.

The story is not without it's flaws, as one would expect from a first novel, but they are minor and didn't impact on the story or my enjoyment of it. Overall, a brilliantly gripping début from S J Watson. I'm looking forward to reading more from him.

8/10.

Robert Galbraith: The Cuckoo's Calling

'The Cuckoo's Calling'

When it first came out that J.K. Rowling had written a book - The Cuckoo's Calling - under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, I wasn't all that bothered. I'd been a massive fan of the Harry Potter books (after a year or so of refusing to read them - they were popular and therefore not for me and my refined 9-year-old tastes), but that J.K. Rowling was their author was just one of those things. So when A Casual Vacancy came out, followed by Cuckoo and The Silkworm under the name Galbraith, why would I be interested? They weren't even the same genre of fiction.

Having just read Audrey Niffenegger's Her Fearful Symmetry, I was on a bit of a thriller/crime kick so when I came across Cuckoo on the shelves in Oxfam (along with SJ Watson's Before I Go To Sleep and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaiden's Tale - reviews forthcoming), I thought 'Why not?'.

Why not indeed. In fact, I can't give you any reasons not to read The Cuckoo's Calling, there are just so many which suggest you should. Ultimately, this is a brilliant old-school detective novel.

The book follows ex-military policeman turned private detective Cormoran Strike as he investigates the apparent suicide of supermodel Lula Landry at the request of her brother. Beautiful, but troubled, Lula's suicide seems like an open-and-shut case, what with the history of drug abuse and the rocky relationship with a known bad-boy, but as Strike begins to look closer at the events that surrounded that night, he begins to suspect foul play. (Hint: he's right.)

The plot is well thought out and intricately & cleverly planned, filled with little revelations which at the time seem insignificant but can either end up having a serious implications or be complete red-herrings. The pace of the book is perfect; as Strike moves through the book interviewing witness and collecting testimonies he begins to get a picture of what happened to Lula, something which remains a mystery to the reader until the very end of the book. Some have criticised the explanatory ending, where Strike details how he put the clues together and confronts the killer with his findings, but I rather enjoyed it. Having been totally in the dark throughout the book, I liked hearing and recalling where each bit of evidence came from and following Strike's thought process. 

The book is also subtly funny, with sly jabs at social commentary. Lula's birth mother is money-grabbing and out to sell her story (probably to the Daily Mail) and her tortured boyfriend is almost a Pete Doherty parody, though he turns out to be more complex and sympathetic than one expects.

In fact, all of Cuckoo's characters are well rounded and intricately detailed - Strike, though the bastard son of a rock star, has only met his famous father twice and feels out of his depth in the moneyed world he's thrust in to. Despite his size - he's 'a lumbering bear of a man' - and military background, he uses his wits, rather than physical intimidation, to solve the case. His secretary, Robin, though meticulous and precise, is surprisingly resourceful, and as a newly-engaged girl with a solid relationship, is the perfect female companion for Strike, the victim of an obsessive and almost abusive partnership with ex-fiancé, Charlotte. We even learn a great deal about Lula as a person, rather than just a body on a slab, through her emails and the remembrances of her friends and colleagues. Despite being somewhat spoiled, Lula is a girl searching for a family to accept her for who she is, rather than what she represents or how much money she earns.

The Cuckoo's Calling was a pleasure to read, and happily the first in a series of Cormoran Strike crime novels, the next instalment being The Silkworm, released in 2014. I will certainly be looking out for it, and recommend you do too.

8/10.

Audrey Niffenegger: Her Fearful Symmetry

'Her Fearful Symmetry'

Last week I read Audrey Niffenegger's Her Fearful Symmetry. Having read and loved The Time Traveler's Wife, when I came across another of her books I was interested to see how it compared. I liked the premise - Twins inheriting a flat from an English Aunt they never knew existed who, though dead and buried, continues to haunt her old home. I'm a sucker for family secrets and ghost stories, so it ticked a lot of boxes for me.

And I really devoured this book. I read it in 2 days.


I really enjoy Niffenegger's style of writing. She's a brilliant story teller and knows how to keep a reader in suspense, which ultimately made me want to keep reading, but having now finished the book, I don't necessarily think that it was the most well crafted story.

Unfortunately the reveal of the big, terrible family secret didn't pack much of a punch as all the characters had known about it all along, just feigning ignorance for the sake of everyone else. I'd also seen it coming pages and pages ago.

But, I think the main issue for me is that, whilst Niffenegger is brilliant at giving psychological insight into the minds of her characters, I'm not sure I really liked the Twins, arguably the centre of the story, which makes it very hard to empathise.

Valentina and Julia are clingy and childish in their twin-ness and really grated on me, which was probably mostly down to personal taste. They're pale, skinny and delicate, insist upon dressing the same at 21 and both still virgins for fear of ever doing something without the other. When Valentina does eventually start trying to spread her wings, something Julia immediately and consistently denies, her solution seems drastic and ridiculous (see spoiler below).

Elspeth, the dead Aunt, and Robert, her lover, are better fleshed out and feel much more real though. Elspeth's sequences as a Ghost trying to find her feet (literally; it takes her a while to re-assume a human form) are particularly enjoyable, and you can feel her boredom as she's trapped in the flat without being able to interact with the living around her.

Robert's grief is palpable and believable, though his budding relationship with Valentina, his dead lover's eerily similar niece, is fairly uncomfortable.

Having said that though, there really was something about the ghostly side of the plot. The ending stuck with me even days later, (Valentina asks Elspeth for her help by temporarily removing her soul from her body, the idea being that Valentina can return to it after her funeral and live life away from Julia, who will think her twin is dead. Elspeth goes along with the ploy but uses it for her own reasons: to steal Valentina's body to be with Robert. Ultimately, everyone ends up miserable - Valentina is stuck in ghost-limbo, Julia and her parents think Valentina is dead and Robert, having assisted in Valentina's deception, is horrified at having unwittingly helped 'kill' a girl so his lover can return to him. In a rare show of backbone, he ends up leaving Elspeth out of disgust, albeit after getting her/Valentina pregnant) and I still haven't quite shaken it off. It was suitably ghoulish and shocking, and gives a lot of food for thought as you think about the layers of the story and what they mean.

I also really enjoyed the side story about the reclusive cross-word setter who lives in the flat upstairs and his overcoming his crippling OCD to win back his wife. Niffenegger's portrayal of the disorder is realistic and sympathetic, and his wife's decision to leave him at the beginning of the book, despite her sincere love for him, is understandable. They continue to love one another from a distance, and the scene where they share a meal on Marijke's birthday - she in a restaurant in Amsterdam, and Martin at home with a microwave dinner - via mobile phones is particularly touching.

I can see why this book didn't receive the critical acclaim The Time Traveler's Wife did - it simply isn't as good - but it is definitely worth a read: It's a good little book about what happens when love dies and being careful about what you wish for. Perhaps I'm only less enthusiastic because I know what Niffenegger can achieve in terms of a well-crafted story.

6/10.