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Fintan O’Toole, ‘Future Fictions’, in Princeton University Library Chronicle (LXXIII), Autumn 2010, 407-18. Fascinating essay that puts Room in the context of other current Irish fiction focused on young protagonists. Donoghue has created one of the pure triumphs of recent fiction: an ebullient child narrator, held captive with his mother in an 11-by-11-foot room, through whom we encounter the blurry, often complicated space between closeness and autonomy. In a narrative at once delicate and vigorous — rich in psychological, sociological and political meaning — Donoghue reveals how joy and terror often dwell side by side.' – note on Room’s choice as one of five best fiction titles of 2010 in the New York Times

Maite Escudero-Alias, 'The Willful Child': Resignifying Vulnerability through Affective Attachments in Emma Donoghue's Room,’ in Victimhood and Vulnerability in 21st Century Fiction, 2017, 35-52. Unfortunately, that is about all I can give points for because the novel itself was a huge miss for me. Huge!! And how the victims suffer under the danger of miscarriage, having a probably disabled kid by their own brother, uncles, fathers, grandfathers, cousins,… and never seeing the light of day. The disturbed monsters who do that combine some of the worst crimes such as slavery, rape, and probably sometimes murder to satisfy whatever this perversion is and where it may come from.

Media Reviews

I have to congratulate Duncan Ralston with this story. For me, it is up there with some of the Matt Shaw stories I enjoyed. Blinder himself states in the introduction that he wrote the book to help policy-makers, academic economists, and the general public to remember the past for ‘history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.’. I think he achieves this goal and has written an accessible, enjoyable, fast-paced, yet accurate history of all the changes and turns that have shaped American macroeconomic policy since 1961. He does this whilst always keeping in mind both the academic developments at the time and the political developments that sometimes interlinked and sometimes diverged dramatically from academic thinking. Reading from Room at International Festival of Authors in Toronto, October 2010: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/in-other-words/podcast-emma-donoghue-reads-at-ifoa-2010/article1784074/ This is actually a well written horror novel. There's a psychological depth to it. There are some absolutely horrific scenes… and there's almost a sense of the poetic to it. Yes, you are getting a book with horrible uses of bodily functions and deaths/mutilations described in loving detail, but you're also getting a book with deeper ideas. What are those ideas? Andrea O'Reilly, 'Redemptive Mothering: Reclamation, Absolution and Deliverance in Emma Donoghue's Room and The Wonder,' in Writing Mothers: Narrative Acts of Care, Redemption, and Transformation, ed. BettyAnn Martin and Michelann Parr (Bradford, ON: Demeter, 2020), pp.141-66

This book is really, really gross. There were a couple of scenes in here that had me physically cringing while I read. If anyone had watched me read this, they would've laughed their asses off. I dare anyone to read this without making funny, grossed-out faces. It's impossible.The NS Books Interview: Emma Donoghue’, http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2010/10/fritzl-case-novel-child-room

The film adaptation, also titled Room, was released in October 2015, starring Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay. The film was a critical and commercial success; it received four nominations at the 88th Academy Awards including for Best Picture, and won Best Actress for Larson. To just go hug your mom so passionately and just keep saying Thank you.... to Hug your kid and really care for everything they say or want.Lucia Lorenzi ‘“Am I Not OK?": Negotiating and Re-defining Traumatic Experience in Emma Donoghue's Room,’ Canadian Literature, No.228-29 (Spring-Summer 2016) https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA491086628&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00084360&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7E8a24a0e1

From here on this review will contain minor plot spoilers. Please don’t continue reading if plot spoilers will ruin the book for you.) Moynagh Sullivan, 'Lactation, Lactation, Lactation: Places, Bodies and In Between in Emma Donoghue's Room,' paper delivered at betweenbodies/bodiesbetween conference, National University of Ireland, Maynooth (2013) And in the same breath, I have to warn any potential reader, if you can't get past the sex in the story, this book will just gross you out - it is best left to the people who can stomach it. Interviewed by Jenny Murray on Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio 4, 12 August 2010: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00t89g6/Womans_Hour_11_08_2010/You should always listen to that voice when something doesn’t feel right. Always look for the red flags. Stop worrying about being nice, about making a scene. I know that now.” María Elena Jaime de Pablos, ‘Becoming Resilient Subjects: Vulnerability and Resistance in Emma Donoghue’s Room,’ in M.I. Romero-Ruiz and P Cuder-Domínguez, eds. Cultural Representations of Gender Vulnerability and Resistance (Palgrave, 2022), pp.33-52. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-95508-3_3 For him Outside is not real, is outer-space, fantasy .. is just TV. “When I was four I thought everything in TV was just TV, then I was five and Ma unlied about lots of it being pictures of real and Outside being totally real. Now I’m in Outside but it turns out lots of it isn’t real at all.”