Room

The situation is sensational—a young woman held captive and raped by her kidnapper gives birth to a boy who she raises in a single room—but with Jack, the five-year-old narrator of Room, Irish-Canadian writer Emma Donoghue manages to create a character for whom this miserable life is completely normal. Jack and his mother's prison—"Room" as he calls it—is the only world he knows. Everything he sees of the world outside comes to him through television; he even refers to things he doesn't know to be real as "television." Using diction as a window to Jack's consciousness is just one example of Donoghue's authorial sleight of hand. Later, when mother and son escape, the world outside "Room" confounds Jack, and as he attempts to navigate what he always thought was a fantasy, his confusion draws attention to the privileges and liabilities of freedom. Some inconsistencies do arise in Jack's narration, exemplified by a sophisticated level of vocabulary that isn't matched by a similar grasp of grammar. Ultimately, however, Donoghue rises above these problems to tell a story that's thrilling, funny, heartbreaking, and not at all held captive by the boundaries of a single room.