Room, By Emma Donoghue

Imprisoned with Ma in a tiny cell by their shadowy abductor, five-year-old Jack makes sense in words of his small but dense world – like Crusoe on his island, or Adam in the garden.

For all its sensational set-up, Emma Donoghue's Man Booker-shortlisted bestseller pulses with fierce intelligence as much as powerful emotion.

In his solitude, bound to Ma by a finely-depicted mutual need, Jack becomes the wide-eyed explorer of unknown continents – above all, via the "planets" on TV. Yet half the book takes place post-escape, as the jargon of meddling professions tries to lock Jack (and Ma) into another sort of jail.

Far from a freakish case-study, Room seeks and finds a common truth, about the private worlds of language and feeling that we all inhabit.