room

May 14, 2014


'I've seen the world and I'm tired now.'


Room



Stories told from a child's perspective don't seem to sit particularly well with me.
Something about the undeveloped language that doesn't quite manage to connect with the emotional side of my brain.
I never seem to invest in the characters because a child is something alien to me now.
I don't remember being five years old, or even eight years old.
My childhood's been misplaced somewhere and i entirely blame my senile memory banks.
Of course there are snippets that are still quite vivid:

Falling in a field of nettles on my first day of living in our new home
(I was 3 and pretty sure i made an unholy noise)
The black, iron gate of my first home as we drove away
Watching Pinocchio with my mum when i was home sick from school
Picking raspberries with my sisters in a field near our house
Falling off my bike headfirst in a field just outside my house
(now covered in suburbia and obnoxious, screaming teacup humans...i miss my field)
Watching my best friend fall headfirst off her bike in the same field just outside my house

I'm not completely bereft of adolescent memories but as 'not grown up' as i may feel, i don't remember the innocence of being a child and i think that's what holds me back from feeling much for the characters in a book such as Room.
It's a shame, as i can see why it was lauded over and considered an important book but no, this one's not for me.

I may have also been hindered by my brain which was raddled with a cold at the time and felt like a ball of cotton wool fizzing with static energy.
Not. Fun.
Do not try to read Nabokov when your brain feels this way.
You will finish three pages and wonder wtf just happened and how you've managed to forget what words are for.

Bleurgh.

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