HAVEN

Emma Donoghue returns with a tale of cruelty and survival

- Emily Landau

EMMA DONOGHUE IS one of Canada's top literary shapeshifters. She's written Dickensian Victorian sagas, shimmering fairy tale retellings and heart pulsing historical mysteries. But Donoghue is at her finest when she does away with all that epic window dressing. Her best and bestselling novel is, of course, Room, about a young woman and her five-year-old son who are held hostage for years in an 11-by-11-foot shack by the mother's kidnapper and rapist. In a setting so spartan, Donoghue forces herself to find new terrain, plumbing her characters' relationships, needs and fears to create a psychological thriller that manages to be harrowing and hopeful all at once.