Emma Donoghue: Room
The existential issue of confinement
MBP: Congratulations on being longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Where were you when you heard the news and how did you react?
ED: I was in a taxi speeding through Cardiff, with my partner and kids and oldest friends in the world, when my editor at Picador rang with the news. I was astonished, and honoured even to be named in such company as Tremain, Mitchell and Carey.
MBP: Room begins with a mother and son captured and living in one room - it's an incredibly chilling and powerful novel. Reviewers have written said that you were influenced by the Elizabeth Fritzl and Jaycee Lee Dugard cases - is this the case and how difficult was it to read this unsettling factual material?
ED: It was the Fritzl case that triggered the idea of the book, as it happens; the Dugard case did not hit the headlines until after the book was written. I was careful to distance the scenario in my book from any of the real-life ones I was reading about, but the research I did was certainly very helpful on, in particular, the issue of how captives cope. The stories I found most distressing were not those of kidnaps, in fact, but those of children raised in appallingly confined, neglected or maltreated situations, usually by their own parents. I deliberately made the circumstances in Room much less horrific than any of the real cases; I did not want to pile up horrors for my readers, but to focus their minds on the more existential issue of confinement.
MBP: In Room, the reader is led to believe that an escape will be the end of their ordeal - yet the ‘outside' world presents new challenges. Did you do any research into how victims coped with life after this kind of imprisonment? Are there themes in victims' responses?
ED: The most interesting material was in studies of solitary confinement, which is widely used in American jails, for instance. The long-term psychic damage of this kind of punitive isolation is clear, so it seemed to me that Ma would have many problems coping with the social world for which she has been longing. And for Jack, of course, much about our world is utterly alien - and not just because he has been raised so strangely, but because he has a fresh perspective on many aspects of the Outside which deserve critique.
MBP: You're a prolific writer - writing for stage and screen, novels, short stories and non-fiction. Are you very disciplined about your approach to writing? How would you divide up your writing day in the middle of a project?
ED: I find that the daycare- and school-timetable provide the perfect discipline; as soon as the kids are out of the house, I rush to my desk! My policy is basically, clear the decks (which includes emailing answers to questionnaires, for instance) as fast as I can so I can actually write.
MBP: Room wasn't yet published when the Man Booker Prize longlist was announced, so it is a very good start for the novel. What do you have in the pipeline for the autumn?
ED: Mostly touring with Room in the US and Canada, then I'll turn my attention to the possibility of selling film rights. But I've already embarked on the next novel, which is set in San Francisco in the 1870s. I find that in all the hurly-burly and highs and lows of promoting one book, it is very grounding to spend at least a part of each day writing the next.
