Mini Book Review (sort of)

Room

By Emma Donoghue

I had this book on hold for about a million years at the library (I'm not much of a book buyer since I'm (a) cheap and (b) I generally don't ever read books a second time) so after waiting forever for this much hyped and anticipated book I was needless to say quite disappointed.  It's a hot book right now on book club lists, getting talked about by everyone and so perhaps I had built it up a little too much in my mind.

The basic premise is this:  A woman has been held captive in a single underground room since she was 19, is repeatedly raped by her captor and while there gives birth to a son who is now 5 years old and the narrator of the story.  I guess this was the main drawback of the story for me.  I found it dreadfully boring and slow to have it told through a child's perspective. 

I am the kind of person who finds stories like this extremely fascinating when they are in the real news and apparently this story was inspired by one of those cases, so I thought I would like this story a lot more than I did.  But, to be honest I didn't even read the whole book, hence the title of this post.  I was so bored in the beginning I sort of skipped to the middle and then skipped some more to the end just to find out what happened and get it over with. 

I don't know if it's because I just would have preferred to have the story told from a grown-up perspective or just that the kid kind of drove me crazy with the way he spoke.  I mean, I get it, it's the only world he's ever known and his mother did a wonderful job raising him considering the circumstances but it just didn't resonate with me at all.

I would love to know what you thought about this book if you've read it already, I'm beginning to wonder if I'm the only person who doesn't think this book is all that and a bag of chips.  I guess I'll just stick with the true life stories from the news to satisfy my morbid curiosities.