I get all sentimental at the end of the year. I make resolutions with abandon, ask people about their own, and pour over every best-of-the-year list I can. I even read Michael Bauer's best new restaurants list even though I cannot and probably will not ever be able to afford to actually eat at one of them.
This year I saw Emma Donoghue's Room on many best books of the year lists. I downloaded it immediately and read through it in, oh, three days flat (Amazon must know how amazing this book is because the Kindle edition costs $11.99, two bucks higher than any amount I've ever paid for an ebook before). This is probably, actually, the best book of the year.
I say this because I've never read anything like it. The point of view (POV as I shall hereby term it) is unique, consistent, well-executed. It's beauty and humor and horror flow together in a perfected prose the likes of which I have never seen. I read Emma Donoghue's Slammerkin years ago and also liked that (an historical novel of very different theme and subject matter).
Room is the story of a 5-year-old boy who discovers, as natural a development as the story itself, that his world is not at all what we thinks: it is a fabrication, an imprisonment, the construction of evil. He does not understand this and we do not ask him to. We are just grateful we are along for this discovery. Jack is as beautiful as the destructive human condition. I really loved this book.
