room: a novel

Vacation means lots and lots and lots of time to read. I love to immerse myself in wonderful books and travel to places and times both familiar and unfamiliar. Holding a book, turning the pages, letting my imagination go and "seeing" the characters and locations in the book is truly one of my most favorite pleasures in life. And sitting on our lanai, listening to and seeing the waves splash up onto the shoreline, makes reading on vacation in Sanibel even more delicious.

Sanibel is not a big place, but it has the most wonderful library - up to date and chock full of recently published books. Renewing our visitor's library card ($10 annually) is one of our first stops on the island. My record for books read on Sanibel is 15 in 4 weeks. I just finished book #11, with a week left to go.

Book #11, recommended by my friend, Wendy, who works at the library, was Room: A Novel, by Emma Donoghue. Wendy and another library employee both raved about this book and said I had to read it. What a treasure! This book quickly took my heart and is now one of my favorites. Here is the book's description, as taken from the jacket cover:

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the world.

It's where he was born, it's where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. There are endless wonders that let loose Jack's imagination - the snake under Bed that he constructs out of eggshells, the imaginary world projected through the TV, the coziness of Wardrobe below Ma's clothes, where she tucks him in safely at night in case Old Nick comes.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma it's the prison where she has been held since she was nineteen - for seven years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in that eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But Jack's curiosity is building alongside her own desperation - and she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer.

Told in the poignant and funny voice of Jack, Room is a story of unconquerable love in harrowing circumstances, and of the diamond-hard bond between a mother and her child. It is a shocking, exhilarating, and riveting novel - but always deeply human and always moving. Room is a place you will never forget.

If you love to read, this is a book you should put at the top of your list.