![]() ![]() ![]() It reminds me of another debacle of failed progressive narrative: the 2004 movie Crash. Room is being described as stunning, insightful, feminist: instead, I find that it sustains some of our culture’s worst assumptions about the bonds between mother and child, and about the shame that attends female sexual violation. Now that the novel has been adapted into a film, which is beautifully acted and directed, I am faced anew with that most frustrating of positions: being told that a cynical and dangerous story is in fact a progressive and radical one. The story of a mother and child as they first live in and then escape captivity (“Ma” was abducted as a teenager by a man named “Old Nick”), Room has troubled me since its publication. What’s not to love about a bestselling feminist novel about sex and motherhood?īut, reader, I hated it. After all, Room - a formally inventive story about domesticity and sexuality - falls into a category of books I love what’s more, Room asks us to perform the politically important task of closely examining women’s experiences of all those topics. EMMA DONOGHUE’S 2010 novel Room seemed like it was made for me. ![]()
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