Your Mammy can read!

Remember Carol, our fantastic organiser from the recent Mammies Xtreme Day Out event? She’s at it again! This time she set up a Book Club for us. I’m so excited. I’ve always wanted to be in a Book Club. Tonight is our first Book Club meeting. I’m not sure what to expect as I’ve never been to a Book Club meeting before, but I’m thinking there’ll be wine. After all, how could you have a proper intellectual discussion about a book without wine?

This month’s book was Room by Emma Donoghue. I’ll be honest – when I read the blurb for this book, I didn’t expect to like it. It’s based on the Josef Fritzl case, and is all about a woman who was abducted aged 19 and has been kept imprisoned in a single room since then. Years have passed and she now has a five year old boy, fathered by her rapist abductor.

Knowing that this was the premise for the book, I couldn’t see how I would enjoy it. However, the manner in which the story is told took me completely by surprise. It is told through the eyes of the five year old boy, Jack. And through his eyes, you learn how much his mother has done to keep him safe, given their circumstances, and to give him as normal an upbringing as she can. This is as much a story of parenting and child development, of the love a mother can have for her son and the lengths she will go to to help him grow, as it is a story of horror and abduction.

I won’t say it was an easy read. There were times I felt panicked when I considered how I would react myself if faced with similar circumstances, and how I would protect Little Man, or even if I could protect him. But those unnerving moments are balanced with the moments where I sat back and enjoyed this exploration of a mother’s love and a child’s innocence. All in all, a great read, and one I may go back and read again in the future.