Review: The Room
My rating: [rating=4]
Summary:
A quirky and unsettling tale, of dark humour and strange realities, about a bureaucrat, an open plan office and a secret room…
The Authority looks favourably upon meticulousness, efficiency and ambition. Bjorn has all of this in spades, but it’s only in the Room that he can really shine. Unfortunately, his colleagues see things differently. In fact, they don’t even see the Room at all.
The Room is a short, sharp and fiendish fable in the tradition of Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett and Charlie Kauffman. If you have ever toiled in an office, felt like the world was against you or questioned the nature of reality then this is the novel for you.
Review:
(I got a copy from NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)
This was a pretty strange read in many ways, but also a compelling one. I kept wondering about the mysterious room, whether it existed or not, whether Björn (the main character) was crazy or not, whether what happened in the room actually happened or not… because no matter what, everything was always just a tad bit too ambiguous to allow me to draw clear conclusions. On the one hand, it was slightly frustrating. On the other, it was interesting.
Björn is clearly a narrator of the totally unreliable variety. He’s also not very likeable, in that he thinks himself better than the others, more skilled and more knowledgeable—and at times, he’s exactly that, while at others, he appears as useless, so once more, you’re kept wondering what to believe. I found him pretty interesting, though, if considered from a sociopathic viewpoint (this kind of character tends to grab my attention: they’re trainwrecks in the making, fascinating and repulsive all at once). He had a very clear, definite image of himself that may or may not match what other people perceived, yet in his mind, the fault was very seldom his; and when he questioned himself, I would wait for the other shoe to drop. In other words, he wasn’t “likeable” as a human being, but as a study of a certain type of mindset, he certainly was.
Daily life in the Authority/the Office turned out a quirky study as well. Various social behaviours, people lined in their little cubicles, procedures, work habits, workplace events and how one can quickly fit in or, on the contrary, commit a fatal faux-pas… It wasn’t nonsense bureaucracy at its finest, but it still lent the whole book a very peculiar atmosphere, with everybody stuck with everybody else (the only character who’s seen being home is Björn, and even then it doesn’t really feel like him, much more like “the place where to be when you’re not at work”). Everybody had their flaw and good sides, but knowing what they are was to be judged according to Björn’s descriptions and to how he perceived his colleagues’ reactions. Definitely a clash of realities here, as one can empathise with the other workers, with how they felt the newcomer was strange and hostile… and at the same time, Björn’s narrative still manages to sow doubt, considering that, all in all, what he wants is to find his place in his new job, as well as a career to aim for.
Commenting on the writing style itself is a bit difficult, since it’s a translation. I found it fluid and easy to follow, with short chapters that broke the flow just like Björn’s personality seemed to be broken, too (if this makes sense). They also felt like a kind of internal filing system used by the character to compartmentalise and gain control over an environment different from what he expected. This format worked fairly well for me, considering the kind of story told here.