The Giver by Lois LowryMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I figure that now that the film version of The Giver is almost out, it's time for me to write a review of the book. I'm going to try to keep this about just the book - if I see the movie I'm going to try to evaluate that on it's own standing even though I'm not entirely pleased with some of the choices they've apparently made with it. I'm also going to just review The Giver on its own as a novel, even though it's the first in a four-book series. I finally did get around to reading the other books in the series, and though they take things in an interesting direction and provide some closure that The Giver on its own lacks, in some ways I prefer The Giver as its own independent story.
I read this book when I was 13, and it is one of the books or maybe the book from childhood that has made the most lasting impression on me. It's just such a simply written, yet powerful story, written at a level suitable for middle schoolers but with themes much more mature than the average young adult novel.
In drawing the reader into protagonist Jonas' world, Lois Lowry shows that sometimes the simplest writing is the most evocative. Jonas is a twelve-year-old boy, and in some ways he seems like a typical preteen boy, but in the community he lives in, everything is perfect and orderly. There is no war, hardship, or poverty, and everyone knows their place. Their future is set out by the community leaders.
But as the novel opens prior to the ceremony where the "Twelves" will receive their vocational assignments, Jonas is feeling apprehensive. And when he receives the role of "The Receiver" to be trained under the wise, aged "Giver," his perfect world is turned upside down.
Jonas's role as the Receiver is to receive memories from "the time before." Every time he meets with the Giver, he receives a memory of something his community no longer has. These memories start out simple - pets, Christmas, sledding - and gradually become more poignant and emotional as Jonas experiences everything from familial love to loss, fear, and pain. As he continues with the Giver, Jonas begins to question all that he has accepted about his community and his life.
I think the reason The Giver works so well is that the reader experiences everything with Jonas. So when Jonas first begins to see flickers of color (yes, all color was stricken from the community in the name of sameness) we imagine what it would be like not to know the color red. From little details that we take for granted to powerful emotions, Lowry makes us question what we would really trade away in search of a "perfect" world.
Yes, some things about Jonas's community don't "make sense." I'm not entirely clear how they have removed color from the community, how memories are transmitted from the Giver to Jonas, etc. And then there are the pills that every community resident takes when they experience their first "stirrings" (sexual urges). I had thought these pills were strictly for controlling or suppressing their sexuality, but both The Giver and later books in the series suggest that they prevent people from forming deep attachments or emotions at all. So why are they not taken until puberty, to prevent children from bonding with the people who raise them but can't be really called "parents"?
However. I've never been one to need dystopian literature to be realistic, and in the case of The Giver adds to the sense of mystery. It is the same for the purposefully up-in-the-air ending. Later books in the series do provide closure as to what happens to Jonas and to Gabriel, the baby Jonas's father had been caring for. However, I almost prefer the way The Giver ends on a note of mystery and wonder.
5 stars for being one of the most powerful books of my childhood/adolescence.
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