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Hello, and welcome to Slate's Audio Book Club from Monday, February 28th. I'm Hanna Rosen, editor of Double X. I am here in the Washington,

D.C. studio with the lovely Margaret Talbot of the New Yorker. Hi, Margaret. Hi, Hannah. And we are

joined in New Haven today by Emily Bazelon, also editor of Double X and a legal writer for Slate. Hi,

Emily. Hello. Today we are going to discuss Room, a novel by Emma Donahue, which is about a mother

and son who are trapped inside a small room after she was kidnapped and the son was

born in the room and it's all fairly gruesome and also wonderful.

But before we get into that, I want to hear something from Emily about our book clubs.

Excellent. So here's some information Emily about our book clubs. Excellent. So here's

some information about our upcoming book clubs. The votes are in for our March selection. It was very

close. The winner was Swamplandia, the debut novel by Karen Russell. And so we're going to talk

about Swamplandia with special guest star John Dickerson on Monday,

March 28th.

That's a plan for March.

And now for April, we would like your help.

We're looking for a good nonfiction title that you're dying to read and discuss.

So please send your suggestions to podcasts with an S on the end at slate.com.

And then you'll be able to vote for the final April selection during the week of March 14th to 18th.

And that will be at our regular book club page, which is slate.com slash book club.

And so just again to get that page, it's slate.com slash book club. And that's to vote for the April selection for our book club during the week of March 14th to 18th.

Excellent. Yeah. So let's start talking about room. I want to begin by talking about my initial reactions. This is a wonderful book. It was on the bestseller list. Many people loved it, but it took me a very long time. That was not your additional reaction. No, it took me a long time to, I just want to say that before my reactions. People don't think I didn't like it. It took me a really long time to crack it open.

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