It draws on so many literary forms or genres - satire, mystery, horror, captivity narrative, Resurrection allegory - that each gets at once too much and too little development. Why, then, has the religious dimension of Room had so little attention from critics? Perhaps because this is a novel at war with itself. Their story brims with references to God, Jesus and Christian saints. He escapes with the help of his saintly mother, who has devoted herself to saving him from their jailor, a man who abducted and raped her and fathered Jack. Her narrator is 5-year-old Jack, who spends his life imprisoned in a garden shed until he emerges from his tomb-like structure on Easter. Little, Brown, 321 pp., $24.99.Įmma Donoghue calls Room a novel about a “battle between Mary and the Devil for young Jesus,” and it’s easy to see why. Warning: This review contains plot spoilers.
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