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How to pronounce Emma Donoghue: don-a-hue
Born in Dublin in 1969, Emma Donoghue is an Irish emigrant twice over: she spent eight years in Cambridge doing a PhD in eighteenth-century literature before moving to London, Ontario, where she lives with her partner and their two children. She also migrates between genres, writing literary history, biography, stage and radio plays as well as fairy tales and short stories. She is best known for her novels, which range from the historical (The Wonder, Frog Music, Slammerkin, Life Mask, Landing, The Sealed Letter) to the contemporary (Stir-Fry, Hood, Landing). Her international bestseller Room was a New York Times Best Book of 2010 and was a finalist for the Man Booker, Commonwealth, and Orange Prizes.
Emma Donoghue's website
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Jack is such a unique narrator. At what point did you decide to tell the story from his perspective?
I never considered any other perspective: letting Jack tell this story was
my idea in a nutshell. I hoped having a small child narrator would make
such a horrifying premise original, involving, but also more bearable:
his innocence would at least partly shield readers on their descent into
the abyss. I also knew that Jack would have some interesting things to
say about our world, as a newcomer to it; the book's satire of modern
mores and media, and interrogations of the nature of reality, grew out
of Jack's perspective rather than being part of my initial plan. I did have
some technical worries about having such a young narrator: I knew the
prospect of being stuck in a little kid's head might turn some readers off.
But I never feared that Jack would be unable to tell the whole story.
How did you manage to get so thoroughly into the mind-set of a
five-year-old boy?
It was a help that my own son was five, but it's not like Finn and Jack
have much in common: Finn has been as shaped by sociability and
freedom as Jack has by routine and one-to-one time with his mother.
I tried to isolate ...
Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
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