Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Readalikes
Emma Donoghue is an award-winning Irish writer who lives in Canada. At 38, she has published seven novels, three books of short stories, two works of literary history, two anthologies and two plays.
Born in Dublin, Ireland, on 24 October 1969, Emma is the youngest of eight children of Frances and Denis Donoghue. She attended Catholic convent schools in Dublin, apart from one year in New York at the age of ten. In 1990 she earned a first-class honours BA in English and French from University College Dublin, and in 1997 a PhD (on the concept of friendship between men and women in eighteenth-century English fiction) from the University of Cambridge. Since the age of 23, Donoghue has earned her living as a full-time writer. After years of commuting between England, Ireland, and Canada, in 1998 she settled in London, Ontario, where she lives with her lover and their son and daughter.
Her novels to date are:
Stir-fry (1994), Hood (1995), Slammerkin (2000), Life Mask (2004), Landing (2007), The Sealed Letter (2008), Room (2010), Frog Music (2014).
About This Biography
This biography was last updated on 04/04/2016. We try to keep BookBrowse's biographies both up to date and accurate, but with over 2500 lives to keep track of it's inevitable that some won't be as current or as complete as we would like. So, please help us - if the information about a particular author is out of date, inaccurate or simply very short, and you know of a more complete source, please let us know. Authors and those connected with authors:
If you wish to make changes to your bio, send your complete biography as you would like it displayed so that we can replace the old with the new.
An Interview with Emma Donoghue about Room
Jack is such a unique narrator. At what point did you decide to tell the story from his perspective?
I never considered any other perspective: letting Jack tell this story was
my idea in a nutshell. I hoped having a small child narrator would make
such a horrifying premise original, involving, but also more bearable:
his innocence would at least partly shield readers on their descent into
the abyss. I also knew that Jack would have some interesting things to
say about our world, as a newcomer to it; the book's satire of modern
mores and media, and interrogations of the nature of reality, grew out
of Jack's perspective rather than being part of my initial plan. I did have
some technical worries about having such a young narrator: I knew the
prospect of being stuck in a little kid's head might turn some readers off.
But I never feared that Jack would be unable to tell the whole story.
How did you manage to get so thoroughly into the mind-set of a
five-year-old boy?
It was a help that my own son was five, but it's not like Finn and Jack
have much in common: Finn has been as shaped by sociability and
freedom as Jack has by routine and one-to-one ...
David Almond, in his own words:
I was born in Newcastle and I grew up in a big Catholic family in
Felling-on-Tyne. I had four sisters and a brother and lots of relatives in the
streets nearby. My dad had been in Burma ...
(more)
If you enjoyed:
Room
Try:
The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean
by David Almond
Chelsea Cain is the New York Times bestselling author of The Night Season, Evil at Heart, Sweetheart, and Heartsick. Both Heartsick and Sweetheart were listed in Stephen King's Top Ten Books of the Year in Entertainment ... (more)
We recommend 28 similar authors
The Tea Planter's Wife
by Dinah Jefferies
An utterly engrossing, compulsive page-turner set in 1920s Ceylon.
Darling Days
by iO Tillett Wright
A devastatingly powerful memoir of one young woman's extraordinary coming of age.
An irresistible love story for fans of Beautiful Ruins and Where'd You Go, Bernadette?
About the book
Blood at the Root
"A gripping, timely, and important examination of American racism."
- PW Starred Review
Visitors can view some of BookBrowse for free. Full access is for members only.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends books that we believe to be best in class. Books that will whisk you to faraway places and times, that will expand your mind and challenge you -- the kinds of books you just can't wait to tell your friends about.
Subscribe to receive some of our best reviews, "beyond the book" articles, book club info & giveaways by email.
