The trio set off down the river ‘in the first haze of Eastertide green’, but this is no resurrection dawn and the adventure is to be no idyll. So, for example, while Artt says he wishes to be Prior to the other two, and ‘first among equals’, he reacts with ‘an odd shiver of delight’ when Cormac and Trian ask if they can call him Father. If there is anything in common between Haven and Donoghue’s multi-million seller Room (2010), it is the exploration of how human beings respond to extraordinary circumstances: something she achieves by acute observation and attention to (poignant) detail. Cormac sees it as an honour to be called, and for Trian the journey is an adventure the younger man sets aside the doubts he has when Artt challenges the Abbot of the monastery about the rules of fasting, saying to himself ‘this Artt is a living saint, and can’t be wrong, can he?’ Here, perhaps, is the central question in the latest novel by Dublin-born author Emma Donoghue.
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