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Room

a Novel
Mar 10, 2020cloroxbleach420 rated this title 1 out of 5 stars
This is one of the most irritating books I've read in a long time, and I really wish I'd picked something else from this author. I'm not exactly sure why this particular book has so much hype around it. The narrator is semi-realistic---- enough so that the story rambles on and on and ON just like a child who doesn't want to take a nap. But there's enough noticeable flaws, as in, things a little kid wouldn't say/think/notice, that keeps the book from being very engaging. A story like this needs to really absorb the reader, and I didn't find that possible at all, since it's literally an entire book written in baby-talk. That combined with the (appropriately) claustrophobic atmosphere made it difficult to even finish it. The story was intriguing enough that I forced myself to finish it, just for the sake of knowing what happens, but I'd never found myself getting into it or even caring about the characters. Perhaps this would've been a better book had the narrative switched between the mother and the son's perspectives. Or maybe, this story would've been better composed as a short story or a novella. It's simply too long for what it is, and halfway through becomes unbearably grating, where I found myself just wanting to know what happened to get it over with.