Book Club Discussion Guide

Room

by Emma Donoghue

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It’s where he was born and where he and his Ma eat and play and learn. At night, Ma puts him safely to sleep in the wardrobe, in case Old Nick comes.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it’s the prison where Old Nick has kept her for seven years, since she was nineteen. Through ingenuity and determination, Ma has created a life for herself and her son, but she knows it’s not enough for either of them. Jack’s curiosity is building alongside Ma’s desperation -- and Room can’t contain either of them for much longer...

Told entirely in the inventive, often funny voice of Jack, Room is a celebration of the resilient bond between parent and child, and a brilliantly executed novel about a journey from one world to another.

Born in Dublin, Ireland, in October 1969, I am the youngest of eight children of Frances and Denis Donoghue (the literary critic, Henry James Professor at New York University). I attended Catholic convent schools in Dublin, apart from one eye-opening year in New York at the age of ten. In 1990 I earned a first-class honours BA in English and French from University College Dublin (unfortunately, without learning to actually speak French). I moved to England, and in 1997 received my PhD (on the concept of friendship between men and women in eighteenth-century English fiction) from the University of Cambridge. From the age of 23, I have earned my living as a writer, and have been lucky enough to never have an ‘honest job’ since I was sacked after a month as a chambermaid. After years of commuting between England, Ireland, and Canada, in 1998 I settled in London, Ontario, where I live with Chris Roulston and our son Finn (7) and daughter Una (3).

Discussion Questions

1.  Why do you think the author chose to tell the story of Room through Jack and not through an omniscient, third-person narrator?

2.  Why does Jack call their captor "Old Nick?"

3.  Which elements of Jack's developmental delays and/or his integration issues surprised you most?

4.  When Ma is interviewed, the interviewer implies that perhaps not everyone would agree with Ma's decisions regarding Jack - first, her decision to keep him in Room when she could have tried to have Old Nick abandon him at a hospital, and second, to teach him that Room was all there is, that things in TV aren't real, etc. What are your thoughts regarding these decisions?

5.  Have you ever gotten into a car with someone you don't know, as Ma did? Did you find this to be a believable way for a 19-year-old to be kidnapped?

6.  Did you find yourself wanting to know more about Old Nick? If so, why do you think this is?

7.  Jack often wishes he were back in Room. Is there any way in which he would be better off back in isolation with only his mother? Why or why not?

8.  What sort of problems do you think Ma will face now that she and Jack are out on their own?