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The turning point of the book’s first half comes when Jack wakes up one morning to find his Ma “gone” - in a kind of temporary catatonia. Jack witnesses a live mouse going in and out of Room through a hole in the kitchen wall. When she wakes up, Ma tells him - and us - about the real nature of their life, and how she came to be there. We have received hints and indications about a would-be older sibling to Jack that died either in the womb or during infanthood, and this passage of the novel makes that development clear.

It’s also where we arrive at a critical juncture; now that Jack has been exposed to the true nature of Room, and now that we know he knows, the novel needs to re-orient itself. It does so at about the right time, if not slightly past its welcome; we have just about reached the point where Jack’s convincing but relatively two-dimensional narration of this world has crossed the line from intriguing to monotonous when Ma hatches her plan to get the two of them out of Room forever by using Jack as a decoy.

The details of their escape attempts are more technical than anything else, but the actual sequence itself - it does no good to continue without revealing that, yes, Ma and Jack do escape Room - is notable for how well it transitions Old Nick. To this point, he’s been mostly an abstract, heard-but-not-seen figure, and the escape sequence does a slick job of transitioning him into a tangible threat and antagonist without announcing itself in doing so. I especially liked the unceremonious exit of the character; there’s no big struggle or absolution given, and such a move would have probably undercut what follows in the story. Instead, we’re only told of a retreating vehicle.

The second half of Room starts with Ma and Jack in a clinic being rehabilitated while much of the world watches them on TV and marvels at their story. It abandons much of the externalized conflict that drove the first half, and examines the impact of seven years in isolation and imprisonment on both Ma and Jack from a mental and emotional point of view. This is where we’re introduced to Ma’s own parents, still fairly young, and to ideas as far as what may be in store for both of the main characters as they attempt to readjust to a world that’s far less understandable and controllable than Room.

The Book

Room, the book, is an introverted and subjective thing. Since it’s entirely told from Jack’s point of view, we are given two fairly distinct outlooks on the world, depending on whether we’re reading a pre-escape passage or a post-escape passage. In the second half of the book, which is less eventful but more compelling psychologically than the first, we’re exposed mostly to the expressions of confusion, grief, and homesickness as manifested by an intelligent and perceptive child who doesn’t know what any of these things mean.

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