"To say Room is based on the Fritzl case is too strong," she says firmly. She is keen, too, to contextualise the link between her novel and the Fritzl case. I was thinking, it's not like that, but no one will know until they read it." A lot of people made out I was writing this sinister, money-making book to exploit the grief of victims. When I meet Donoghue, halfway through a publication tour that has mushroomed thanks to her longlisting, she recalls the period as "quite painful. Unsurprisingly, accusations of cynicism and sensationalism abounded. In the run-up to publication, however, word was that Donoghue's seventh novel would be based on the modern-day case of Josef Fritzl, who locked his daughter, Elisabeth, in a basement for 24 years, raped her repeatedly and fathered her seven children – three of whom he imprisoned with her. Slammerkin, her unlikely bestseller in 2000, was spun out of a murder on the Welsh borders in 1763, while in 2006 The Sealed Letter took a notorious Victorian divorce as its grist. Until now, Donoghue's reputation had been founded on her knack for spotting historical rough diamonds and buffing them into glowing narratives. At that point, the rumblings turned into a roar. And at the end of last month, a fortnight before it was due to appear in bookshops, Room was longlisted for the Man Booker prize. First came the bidding war, eventually won in the UK by Picador then the rumours, rare these days, of an astronomical advance (the figure of €1m has been mentioned Donoghue allows only that it was "mortifyingly large"). Room was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award in 2010 and the screen adaptation, also written by Donoghue, was nominated for four Academy Awards.F or those with an ear to the ground, the rumblings about Room, Emma Donoghue's latest book, have been audible for months. Told in the inventive, funny and poignant voice of Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience, and a powerful story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible.
But Jack's curiosity is building alongside Ma's own desperation, and she knows that Room cannot contain either indefinitely. Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it's the prison where she's been held since she was nineteen - for seven long years.Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in that eleven-by-eleven foot space.
It's where he and Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. To five-year-old Jack, Room is the world. 100 writers in Canada you need to know now
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