Thalia Book Club: Emma Donoghue's ROOM

Emma Donoghue discusses her extraordinary new novel with author Michael Cunningham (The Hours and By Nightfall).  This wondrous book is told from the point of view of a five-year-old boy who lives with his mother in an 11-by-11 foot room. "Jack's voice is one of the pure triumphs of  this truly memorable novel [which] presents an utterly unique way to talk about love, all the while giving us a fresh, expansive eye on the world in which we live." (New York Times Book Review)

"Potent, darkly beautiful, and revelatory."  Michael Cunningham

 Actress Michal Friedman will read an excerpt.

"Expressing a 5-year-old's emotions amid subject matter like this is an enormous undertaking, and Friedman delivers." - AudioFile Magazine

Download this program from Audible.com

Performance playlist:

Reading
Michal Friedman

Conversation
Emma Donoghue and Michael Cunningham

A Discussion with the Audience

Emma Donoghue was born in Dublin in 1969. She is a writer of contemporary and historical fiction whose novels include the bestselling Slammerkin, The Sealed Letter, Landing, Life Mask, Hood, and Stirfry. Her story collections are The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits, Kissing the Witch, and Touchy Subjects. Donoghue has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Room. She was the joint winner of the 2009 Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Fiction for The Sealed Letter and winner of a 2008 Golden Crown Literary Award for Landing. She also writes literary history, and plays for stage and radio. She lives in London, Ontario, with her partner and their two small children.

Michael Cunningham is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Hours, in addition to A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, Specimen Days, and his newest novel, By Nightfall. The Hours was made into a film in 2002 starring Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep. His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Redbook, Esquire, The Paris Review, The New Yorker and The Best American Short Stories. Mr. Cunningham has received the Pen/Faulkner Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. 

Michal Friedman lives in New York City and keeps her hands in many creative pots. Not only is she an accomplished singer/songwriter performing as “Michal the Girl,” but she also does voiceover work on cartoons, commercials, video games, audiobooks and more. She is the voice of Jack on the audiobook of Room, which has recently been named one of the best ensemble audiobooks of 2010 by Audiofile Magazine.