Three Rooms

“A woman must have money and a room of one’s own.” So said Virginia Woolf in her classic A Room of One’s Own, but in this scrupulously observed, gorgeously wrought debut novel, Jo Hamya pushes that adage powerfully into the twenty-first century, to a generation of people living in rented rooms. What a woman needs now is an apartment of her own, the ultimate mark of financial stability, unattainable for many.

Set in one year, Three Rooms follows a young woman as she moves from a rented room at Oxford, where she’s working as a research assistant; to a stranger’s sofa, all she can afford as a copyediting temp at a society magazine; to her childhood home, where she’s been forced to return, jobless, even a room of her own out of reach. As politics shift to nationalism, the streets fill with protestors, and news drip-feeds into her phone, she struggles to live a meaningful life on her own terms, unsure if she’ll ever be able to afford to do so.

This discussion guide was written by Annabel Zane and the recommended reading is sponsored in partnership with Harper Collins.

Book club questions for Three Rooms by Jo Hamya

Use these discussion questions to guide your next book club meeting.

The narrator goes nameless throughout the entirety of the novel, as well as many of the other characters she encounters. Why do you think the author decided to do this? What effect did it have on the story?

Throughout the novel the narrator is in desperate search of a place she feels is her own. Why is that so important to her? Do you relate to this feeling?

Jo Hamya includes many real and specific details about the political atmosphere in the UK when this book is set in 2018. Did you enjoy these grounding details? Do you feel they enhanced the story?

The narrator spends much of her time anxious over her ability to make ends meet, while feeling overworked and underpaid. It makes her question if it’s all worth it. Is she being cynical or do you sympathize with her and her situation?

The narrator finds it difficult to express her opinions without fear of being told she is wrong, due to the constant inflow of opinions on social media. If you are active on social media, have you felt this pressure to say the “right” thing or to not say the “wrong” thing, out of fear of the backlash? Does social media play a role in forming your opinions?

This book follows the life of a millennial in a transitional period in her life, struggling to plant roots. She feels disconnected from the people around her and is essentially floating through life. Are her attempts to connect with her surroundings and those around her sincere efforts?

Hamya largely took inspiration for this novel from Virginia Woolf’s extended essay A Room of One’s Own. How are the two works similar? How are they different?

Characters the narrator interacts with often push back on her way of thinking, and provide insights different from her own. Was the narrator receptive to these opposing viewpoints? How, if at all, did her opinions or worldview change by the end of the novel?

In this novel what do you think is more important, the plot or the stylized writing?

If this book were to be made into a movie, who would you cast for each of the characters?

Three Rooms Book Club Questions PDF

Click here for a printable PDF of the Three Rooms discussion questions

“I was bowled over by this barbed, supple book about precarity and power, both for its spiky, unsettling intelligence and the frank beauty of the writing.” —Olivia Laing, author of The Lonely City and Everybody

"Jo Hamya is an exceptionally gifted writer. Her portrait of a bright young woman struggling to get a foothold in an indifferent world is acute, informed, and deeply felt. Three Rooms slowly but surely broke my heart." —Claire-Louise Bennett, author of Pond

"Sophisticated, spiky...Strikingly thoughtful...A phenomenal achievement. Perfectly judged set pieces at parties, offices and art galleries are infused with the illuminating and inquiring mind of an author who watches our society with an unflinching x-ray eye and tells its stories back to us with elegance and wit. And that, surely, is the mark of an excellent writer." —Times

"Virginia Woolf said a woman must have a room of one’s own, but Jo Hamya’s debut novel looks at what happens when that’s just economically not feasible...[A] Millennial novel about everything that’s trying to underpin our sense of security." —Nylon

"A sharp statement on Millennial disenfranchisement and poverty." —Ms. Magazine