My friend Lori recommended this book to me back in 2010 but I was a little afraid of it. I wasn't sure what to expect but I had a basic idea of the premise, a young woman held captive in a single room where she has the baby of her captor and spends years there. I was worried it would be a painful read and so I put it off.
Now it is a movie with Oscar buzz and I plan on seeing it at some point but I wanted to read the book first before I had the movie version in my head. And I am so glad I did.
While yes Ma (she has a name and while it is alluded to it is never told) and Jack live in a room where she has been for 7 years and he for his entire 5 years it isn't the part that stays with you by the end of the story.
The real point of the story starts to take shape after they get out of the room. Ma needs to learn who she is and help Jack find his place in a world he didn't know existed as she tries to cope and heal with the trauma she has endured.
The other characters feel real and you can, even as you feel frustrated by them, feel how difficult this all is for them. Ma's mother just wants Jack to be a normal kid and Ma's father wants Jack to never have been born and can't even look at him. Jack's Steppa (step-grandfather) ends up being one of my favorite characters in the story.
Life is for living even under the worst of circumstances and fear can be overcome, that is the message or point of this moving, and yes at times painful, story.
(Finished February 8, 2016)
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