Just Didn't Love 'Em

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough...not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, ROOM is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.

I wonder if I would have liked this book more if I'd read it instead of listened. At first it had my attention, but then got redundant until the "escape".  I understand that it was written from Jack's POV, but the voice (narrator?) got so annoying. If I had to hear "Can I have some", "I want some", one more time, I was going to scream. I should have abandoned the audio for the print. After the escape, I was more interested in Ma than Jack, and would have liked it had the POV switched back and forth.  If you have not read this book, choose the print version and skip the audio!

Celia and Djuna were the ringleaders of a highly competitive quintet of girls, caught in an escalating cycle of test, reward and punishment that peaked the afternoon they all walked home along a forbidden woodland road. Celia blocked out what happened, but everyone else in Jensenville assumed that Djuna was abducted that day, though neither Djuna nor her abductor was ever found.

Twenty years later, Celia and her boyfriend Huck are professionally successful, but their relationship has fallen into a stasis that Celia feels helpless to change. When Celia’s memory of that terrible afternoon suddenly returns, she is forced to confront the part she played in her best friend’s disappearance, and returns to Jensenville to confess.

In a hometown defined by what it was and can no longer be, Celia discovers that her unconscious avoidance of what really happened so long ago has had lasting repercussions. Her aging parents—their love handicapped by a lifetime of reserve—insist that she is innocent. Celia’s childhood friends not only don’t believe her, but insist that she should be apologizing for a completely different offense. Huck wants to be supportive, but can neither ignore all that contradicts Celia’s version of the past, nor the damage it has inflicted on their shared life. Celia’s search for the truth has startling and powerful consequences, resulting in a story that persists in the mind long after the last page has been turned.

This was too "all over the place" for me.  Was it about Djuna's disappearance? Celia's bullying as a child? Celia trying to regain lost memories? I found myself not caring at all about Celia.  I do believe this would make for a good discussion at a book club with the issues raised in the story.