The premise of this book, a young women kidnapped and held captive and raped by a stranger over a period of years, is not the basis of a story that I would expect to enjoy. But the genius of this book is the choice of narrator. The book is written as a first person perspective from the point of view of the five year old son of the young woman, the product of the repeated rapes. Jack was born in this captivity, and this single Room is the only world he has ever known. It is this naïve perspective that makes the story something more than just another grueling tale of torture and pain. And, after Jack and his mother manage to escape their captivity, it is through Jack's viewpoint that we come to appreciate the struggles his mother faces in readjusting to the outside world, so say nothing of Jack's own struggles to grasp the realities of a world that is far beyond anything he could have imagined when his world was limited to the Room.

This book is very well written, and does an amazing job of putting the reader into the mind of a remarkable five year old. And it takes a story that is about a fundamentally disturbing situation and infuses it with humor and hope, while also providing a somewhat satiric glimpse at the things we take for granted in our everyday lives.