Room with a panoramic view: How Emma Donoghue's latest novel aims to tell a universal story

Good novels have a habit of reading their critics’ minds. Last week Room, the seventh novel by the Irish-born writer (and now Canadian citizen) Emma Donoghue, reached the long-list of the Man Booker Prize. Even before the selection it came trailing clouds of expectation: the bidding war, the rights deals, the talking-up and talking-past that can smother a book with its own renown even before it …