Book Review 2014: The Giver
Book #5
Okay, this picture really has nothing to do with the book. But again with the resizing. And the sentiment expressed in the photo does a good job of portraying my sentiments about the book.
Okay, this is another cheat. I read Lois Lowry’s The Giver back in sixth grade when it was assigned in my Language Arts class. Let me tell you something, I hated it. I mean, I really hated it. I think after finishing it, I probably threw it against a wall and said “WTF” even though people didn’t say “WTF” all the way back in 1996 or whenever it was. It’s a short book and I’ve always been a fast reader, so I probably finished this before anyone else. I waited for other students to finish it so we could complain about it, as we often did with the other crap books we were assigned for class. The problem? I was the only one in the world who thought this book was bullshit. Everyone else was all, “Oh wow, this was the best book ever. Maybe we do sometimes get to read good books for class.” Even when I got to high school, in a completely different state, years later, people would say, “Have you read The Giver? It is amazing and I’ve read it a thousand times.” I couldn’t escape it.
I wanted to read something quickly and for whatever reason, my hatred of this book has stuck with me since the first time I read it so I thought, maybe there is something to it after all, maybe I should give it another shot.
First off, it took about two seconds to read, which surprised me. Second, it was slightly better than I remembered but still kind of crap. I appreciate that Lowry is a good writer and manages to get kids thinking about complex subjects, such as what happens when we learn that our parents and other adults are often lying to the rest of us. However, it didn’t give me enough, not then and definitely not now. I suppose I’d already read quite a few dystopian novels by the time I got to this one, so it just left me going “So?”
Also, the ending and overall shortness of the book feels more like laziness or fear of development to me than any sort of deep message. When I was younger, I did a couple of short story projects with some pretty cool teachers. It was so tempting to create a world where the character is stuck in place, has his or her eyes opened by something, and creates some sort of change by leaving the scene. Maybe the girl is sick of her environment so she jumps into the ocean and swims away. Maybe that’s the best ending. Or maybe the author got scared and didn’t know where that girl wants or needs to go. My creative writing teachers would look at such endings and say, “This is good, but you need to step it up. Challenge yourself. Go beyond this.” It would be hard but it could be done. I’m not saying that every story needs to be neatly resolved or have a clear ending, not at all. But there’s a difference between leaving things open ended and dropping everything because you couldn’t think of anything else to say. I’m sure that many people would argue with me over this, but that’s how I see it, and that view hasn’t changed since 1996.
