Though she made her name with the historical Slammerkin, Irish-Canadian novelist Emma Donoghue is also known for her contemporary fiction. After last year’s historical, The Sealed Letter, Donoghue has plans to publish a ripped-from-the-headlines story with Little, Brown. As she describes it on her site, Room is a “dark contemporary novel in the voice of a five-year-old boy,” who happens to have been held captive in a garden shed (with his mother) most of his life. Shades of Jaycee Dugard, but, eerily, Donoghue had been working on the novel for months when Dugard was discovered in the Garridos’ backyard.
Don’t miss our interview with Donoghue for her 2004 historical, Life Mask.
Hi there. My forthcoming novel ROOM was first inspired by the Fritzl case (which hit the headlines in April 08), actually, but I wanted to make the scenario considerably less horrifying by granting my characters the gift of sunlight… It did indeed give me shivers when I read about Jaycee Dugard. As a mother, what impresses me most is how she homeschooled those girls after the minimal education she’d had herself…
Hi Emma — thanks for the insider explanation! I had forgotten about the Fritzl case, which is a horrible thing to admit. Kind of shocking that two such similar cases came to light so close together.