In a Room with Emma Donoghue

Like many people around the world, I was first introduced to Emma Donoghue's writing through Room. The book, written from the perspective of five-year-old Jack, starts out innocently enough - through short sentences and childish observations. Jack likes watching TV. He loves his mother, Ma. But as you keep reading, you realise there's a lot that Jack sees, but doesn't quite understand. Like the fact that the 11-by-11-feet room he lives in is permanently locked, and there's no way out. Or the fact that his mother was actually abducted from the real world - a place he has never seen before. The book, published in 2010, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize that year, and later adapted into a film of the same name that was nominated for four Academy Awards - including one for Donoghue, who had written the screenplay for the movie. As the daughter of academic and literary critic Denis Donoghue, it's safe to say writing is in her blood. The Irish author has a Bachelor of Arts degree from University College Dublin and a PhD in English from Girton College, Cambridge. So, did she always know she wanted to be a writer? "I would have liked to be a ballerina, but it's safe to say that I'm better at writing than I was at dancing," she jokes. Naturally, after the success of Room, I started tearing through the rest of Donoghue's works, and was rather surprised to find it as varied as can be. From contemporary Irish novels to fairytales for kids, the author has refused to let herself be pigeonholed. "I write what I am curious or passionate about, so it's usually a different world each time," she explains. "That keeps me fresh. Because my work is so varied, I don't feel like I have readers or publishers who expected something predictable of me." Her body of work includes a focus on historical fiction, as seen in novels like Slammerkin, The Sealed Letter and Frog Music. "It could be described as a defamiliarisation device," says Donoghue, when asked about what draws her to the genre. "It's a way of pushing the reader off balance, making the world strange to them, waking them up. I also like taking an idea that's almost banal today - such as civil rights - and tracing it back to when it was a radical new suggestion." Though a master at working between genres, for now, Room is her biggest bestseller - but it's not about the unique plot of the story that makes it stand out; it's the childish perspective through which it is told. A lot of people might argue that narrating the story of imprisonment and kidnapping, which was actually inspired by the Josef Fritzl case of 2008, through the eyes of a child is a bit too dark, but for Donoghue, there was no other way to tell it. "I was convinced a child's-eye perspective would both shelter the reader from the grimness of the story and offer an original, unsentimental angle," she explains. It also helped that she had two kids at home to help her gain insight into the mind of a child! "I followed my five-year-old son around like an anthropologist, charting his games and his linguistic oddities," she confesses. But essentially, what a lot of people may not guess, given the drama and the breathtaking intensity of the book, is that Room isn't just a thriller. For Donoghue, it's a parenting book, which would explain why some of the most insightful scenes happen after the second half - the process of readjustment, and letting a child 'grow up and grow away from you'. Interestingly, after the success of the book, Donoghue knew that there would be an interest in adapting it for the big screen. Rather than waiting for a screenwriter to come along, Donoghue, 'determined to protect the story from turning into either an exploitative or sentimental movie', decided to write the screenplay herself, and recommended that director Lenny Abrahamson work on the film. "It is important to pick the right director because it is their film at the end of the day," she says. "Your script is only the beginning. From the moment Lenny Abrahamson sent me a ten-page letter describing the film he wanted to make of Room, I knew I could trust his philosophical depth, good taste and warm heart." Donoghue has recently moved on to working on her latest project - The Lottery series, meant for children. Her final advice is for budding writers: "Don't worry about what's fashionable or likely to sell. My biggest bestseller had an idea so strange and creepy that most people I described it to looked repelled!" janice@khaleejtimes.com