Emma Donoghue says massive success of novel 'Room' is a 'freak situation'

TORONTO - She'll find out Tuesday whether she's made the short list for the Man Booker Prize for fiction, but Ontario-based author Emma Donoghue already has many reasons to celebrate.

Last October, the Irish-born writer's harrowing new novel "Room" — about a boy who's never been outside the room in which he lives with his mom — was bid on by several publishers in the U.K.

Then, in July, "Room" made the Booker long list before it was even published. When it finally hit shelves in Britain and Ireland, it was an instant bestseller.

Now, various North American publications — including Oprah Winfrey's O magazine — have it on their must-read lists ahead of publication in Canada on Sept. 11 and the U.S. on Sept. 13.

"What's happening to 'Room' is a freak situation for me," Donoghue, 40, said with a laugh in a recent phone interview from her London, Ont., home.

"My usual experience is that of most novelists: oblivion and mild humiliation. I'm not complaining here because it's just how it is for most writers. And I've never had to do anything else but write, so as far as I'm concerned I've been very successful all along.

"But the fact is, on most publication days, nothing happens — you sit there at home and nobody calls and if you're lucky there might be some reviews a couple of weeks later. So to have all these exciting things happen for 'Room,' it's just a blast."

Many readers have been struck at the way "Room" subtly echoes the case of Elisabeth Fritzl, an Austrian woman whose father was convicted last year of imprisoning her in a cellar for 24 years, repeatedly raping her and fathering her seven children.

Donoghue says the Fritzl case put the idea for "Room" into her mind.

"But I knew immediately that I did not want to write a novel about Elisabeth Fritzl, it wasn't like that at all," added the Dublin-born wordsmith, who was longlisted for the 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize for "The Sealed Letter."

"It was the pure nugget of the idea about a child growing up in a sealed-off world and yet thinking that it was world enough. It was the idea of that very loving trick a mother might play in a situation like that — that for the sake of her child's happiness, she might actually decide to persuade the child that this was the whole world.

"It immediately reminded me of classical and Christian myths about the virgin sealed away giving birth to a hero child. So I think that's one reason this has touched people — it has such ancient elements to it."

"Room" is narrated by five-year-old Jack, who lives with his "Ma" in a locked, soundproofed, three-by-three-metre shed.

In Jack's eyes, things on the television are just "TV," the sun that shines through the skylight (their only window) is God, and the mysterious man who visits Ma late at night is from another planet.

Ma's survival strategy involves creating a structured world for Jack, one in which they eat and sleep at the same time each day, do exercises in their limited space and make toys out of scraps.

"Oh, she's so much better a mother than I could ever be!" exclaimed Donoghue, who has two children: daughter Una, 3, and son Finn, 6.

"I have all the ideas but I'm not sure I could actually be like that."

When Donoghue started writing the story last year, she put the dimensions of the room onto a home-design website and imagined living in it. She also read up on the Fritzl case as well as stories of children being raised in "weird and confining ways," she said.

To slip into Jack's dialogue and mindset, she watched her own children play. She even rolled up her son gently in a carpet repeatedly one time to understand how Jack would've done it in a particularly suspenseful part of the story.

"They were a terribly helpful source to me," she said of her children.

"But they're really not a bit like Jack because they've been so spoiled by the outside world."

Ultimately the story is about parenting and the adult-child bond, she explained.

"The premise of the book, the enclosure, was just a way of heightening and dramatizing that fundamental commitment when you decide to be there for a child," said Donoghue, who is also a literary historian and writes short stories as well as drama for the stage and radio.

"So 'Room' is all about dramatizing that. The kidnapping is incidental, really."

When the Booker short list is announced on Tuesday, Donoghue will be running around gettingher children off to their first day of the school year.

"I'll be a harried housewife," she said, laughing.

Donoghue figures she has "no hopes at all" of making it onto the list anyway because she's been reading her competition — which includes Newfoundland and Labrador author Lisa Moore for "February" — and feels they're "all very very good."

Just being on the long list is a prestigious honour, she said.

"I think the Booker is noticed by people who don't hear of any other book awards. I know when I was growing up as a child it was the only one I had ever heard of and I suppose it has the same kind of currency in Britain as say the Pulitzer in America, you know, it's got that amazing name recognition."