first published: 2021
read: 19 march 2025 - 22 march 2025
pages: 208
format: e-book
genres: fiction; literary fiction; contemporary; adult
favourite character(s): probably the editor who gave the main character a bit of a reality check
least favourite character(s): priscilla
first line(s): "my first experience of the house was shuttling boxes through the front door."
rating: 🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑
thoughts: i kind of knew exactly how i'd feel about three rooms as soon as i'd read the first page. i tend to struggle to enjoy books like these - pretentious, navel-gazing literary fiction is all i can describe it as. books that feel as though they were written to prove how intellectual the author is. it's not a judgement, it's just how i perceive this type of writing and how i'm able to relate (or more often, to not relate) to the narrative. while i do think three rooms brought up a lot of thoughtful discussions - the political and economic state of the UK, what it means to be a millennial (or an older gen-z like me) moving through such a world, and how we make meaningful critiques while acknowledging our own privilege - the narrative style kept me at a distance and made quite a short book feel like a laborious and tedious read.
as i say, the thematic discussions were the most interesting part for me, and what kept this dropping below a 3* rating. there were some thoughtful observations made, and, despite the fact that i'm not left entirely sure what messages the author wanted to leave us with, given the number of conflicting ideas, i liked that it was thought-provoking. the thoughts on grenfell towards the end of the book were especially good, and i enjoyed the class discussions (though this was an area in which i felt there was an amalgamation of ideas rather than a cohesive singular direction).
i didn't quite like the focus on an unnamed protagonist in this book. she generally lacked a personality and was more of a representation of a typical millennial woman of colour. although she was definitely a barely fictionalised version of the author, in the context of the book she was little more than a vessel through which we could consider the world, and while this wasn't an objective issue, it didn't do much at all to further my engagement with the book. the writing style didn't help here - there's no other word i can think to use to describe it other than pretentious. it's the type of writing that really put me off reading literary fiction back when I read a lot less of the genre.
i don't know, overall i'm just not into sad girl, self-indulgent, semi-intellectual fiction and that's what three rooms was for me. what i gained from reading it didn't make this enough of a worthwhile read for me to go out of my way to recommend it, but i could see this appealing to other readers who enjoy this type of fiction.
