Room by Emma Donoghue

When you read the synopsis of this novel, it doesn't exactly encourage you to pick it up and start reading. It sounds massively depressing for a start - the story is of a five year old boy and his Mum who are being held captive by a man (who also fathered the boy) in Room. And it's narrated by the five year old. Both of those things made me thing that it wouldn't be very good, and that it would also be very dark to read.

Not a bit of it. I soon got into the style of the writing, and, coming from the child's perspective makes it an entertaining read. This is a kid who has never been outside the room he was born in so how he views his world and what happens in it is highly interesting, and amusing in places. Plus, because it's from his perspective, there's nothing graphic actually in the book, although cleary some horrendous stuff has been going on. Yes, there are some dark parts, and some thriller-like parts that had me on tenterhooks, but there are also many heartening cheerful parts. I was overwhelmed by the ingenuity of the Mum, who has managed to bring her son up in as healthy a way as she can manage and educate him with the limited resources available to her. And by the ingenuity of the author, who had obviously put a massive amount of thought into both the circumstances of the main characters' lives and also what it would be like for the boy once he is outside the room. And I'd better not say any more, else I'll give the plot away! ;-)

I read this very very fast, in slightly over a day. It's one of those unputdownable books.

I had a busy week last week. The new job is fantastic. All I had hoped it would be and I've had a lovely time. Even the daily commute wasn't too bad, although I was quite tired by the end of the week.
It was nice having extra time for reading and knitting on the train (about 1.5 hours a day now!) and so far I've had a seat on every train and tube I've been on.
I'm currently reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel and A vintage affair by Isabel Wolff, so I'll review those once I've finished them. Wolf Hall is taking a while as it's really too heavy to take on the train so I'm only reading it at home.

Knitting-wise, I've finished some more blanket KAL squares, and am actually waiting for next month's patterns to be released instead of frantically trying to get squares finished before the end of the month!

I managed to forget to cross one of the cables over in the cabled square and then also forgot that I have the Knit fix book which tells you how to fix this...

That's all for now. With the new job I'm finding that I have less time for blog reading and catching up with Ravelry and Facebook, so bear with me!