Room - the book - the mind

I rarely find the time for reading fiction. It's a real shame because I love what's out there.

I rarely find the time because I blog. I am forever thinking either what I'm going to write or how I'm going to write which interupts my mind space for reading/course hunting/job searching.. I wish blogging was my proper paid a squillion a post job because it feels like a job.

Anyway, I say this because I have found time to read Room by Emma Donoghue!

I haven't finished it yet. Got way into it last night (tears fell). This morning, I would have ordinarily come home to write but Mistress Ha Ha texted me at the crack of dawn asking me if I'd accompany her around all cafe's in the vicinity to place postcards about Zen Boot Camp.

What a beautiful day! We finished up at the Heath, where we had a coffee and chatted - she's a stigmum like me, frightened about what the new welfare rules are going to mean for her and her two daughters. When she left, the sky was still so blue, the breeze so warm, that I climbed up to an oak tree and sat and read my book.

Read it. My friend Jo recommended it to me, said she wasn't sure whether I'd like it. I won't tell you the plot but I will tell you that it's beautiful and hard but also compelling and rich.

This story of a mother and son is told through the eyes of the five year old child.

It has resonated quite powerfully with me. I have felt guilt and I have felt love as though this five year old, was my five year old.

Ma's Gone - I was gone alot - Mute Mother
Shhh, I'm thinking -

"Mummy, I am sorry for making a fight with you,
Lots of love
Son xxx"

This is from my child, yesterday, a drawing of a butterfly on the other side. A fight because he wanted to wear the new Red Converse his daddy gave him to school and I said 'no'. After the card I still said 'no' but hugged him and said I was sorry too. He's worn them today (not because of the book I have to say, but because there was no quick change Kung Fu and because it was so sunny, not raining).

Love.

Children.

I wish I'd written down all the things my son said, my son says. Children think so logically. They live much more in the present moment than we adults do.

Has it resonated with me to the degree it has because I am a single mother with a son too? Does it resonate with married mothers? With mothers with several children? Do fathers feel it? Lone ones with a son or daughter, married ones, ones with several?

I haven't finished the book. One last "chapter" to go.

It's a stigmum recommendation

(and gets labelled under Book Review even though Book Review is for free books I get not books I bought like this one (though it was reduced!))