The Hunger Games

Wow. I was barely able to put this book down for a second after the first few pages got me completely hooked. Suzanne Collins narrative here has an immediacy to it that, when combined with the very dramatic life-or-death plot, is incredibly compelling. It’s entertaining, and incredibly disturbing all at once. If this was merely a good read, I would have given it 4 stars, but they say great art leaves you changed after you experience it… and this book definitely did that. Suzanne Collins has, with one amazing work, propelled herself onto my top shelf.

Parents, caveat emptor! The storyline is brutal. Even though the writing is geared for young adults, the main characters are teenagers, there’s very little physical romance, and the actual violence would probably count as PG-13 nowadays… it’s probably one of the most terrifying books I’ve read in a very long time! Right up there with George R.R. Martin, if not more so. Remember what we learned from Jaws: you don’t actually need to SEE the shark in order for it to be terrifying. Sometimes not seeing the shark is even worse.

The story is basically about a teenager who is forced to compete in a 24-man-enter-1-man-leaves event. I don’t want to spoil it by saying any more, but if you liked The Running Man, you’ll definitely like this. And if you’re young enough that you don’t remember The Running Man, nor did you get the Thunderdome reference, then I’m just way too old. But take an old fogey’s advice and read this book.

Amazon, when can I preorder book 2???

Clearly Gregor was merely the prelude. Suzanne Collins, you’ve been holding out on us, missy. As an author we were accustomed to your fun adventures involving a boy, his sister, and a world beneath our world. I think it’s fair to say that we weren’t really expecting something like The Hunger Games. At least I wasn’t. But reading it gave me a horribly familiar feeling. There is a certain strain of book that can hypnotize you into believing that you are in another time and place roughly 2.3 seconds after you put that book down. Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer could convince me that there were simply not enough canned goods in my home. And The Hunger Games? Well as I walked down the street I was under the disctinc impression that there were hidden cameras everywhere, charting my progress home. Collins has written a book that is exciting, poignant, thoughtful, and breathtaking by turns. It ascends to the highest forms of the science fiction genre and will create all new fans for the writer. One of the best books of the 2008 year.

Life in District 12 isn’t easy for Katniss and her family. Ever since her father died the girl has spent her time saving her mother and little sister Prim from starvation by hunting on forbidden land. But worst of all is reaping day. Once a year the government chooses two children from each of the twelve districts to compete against one another in a live and televised reality show. Twenty-four kids and teens enter, and only one survives. When Prim’s name is called, Katniss exchanges herself without hesitation to compete alongside the baker’s boy Peeta. To survive in this game you need to win the heart of your audience, and so District 12′s trainers come up with a plan. Why not make it as if Peeta and Katniss were in love with one another? But in a game where only one person can live, Katniss will have to use all her brains, wits, and instincts to determine who to trust and how to outwit the game’s creators.

I described the plot of this book to my husband, particularly the part where Katniss and Peeta fake being in love to gain the audience’s approval and the very first thing he said was, “Oh! That’s the plot of They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” Then I mentioned that it took place in the future and that government leaders set up teenagers to fight one another to the death and he said, “Battle Royale“. So sure, there are parts of this plot that have been done before. You could say it’s The Game meets Spartacus with some Survivor thrown in for spice. But that’s not what makes a book good or bad, is it? Some of the greatest works of literature out there, regardless of the readerships’ age, comes about when an author takes overdone or familiar themes and then makes them entirely new through the brilliance of their own writing. Harry Potter wouldn’t have been any great shakes if it weren’t for Rowling’s storytelling. Similarly, Collins takes ideas that have certainly seen the light of day before and concocts an amazingly addictive text. About the time you get to the fifth chapter that ends with a sentence that forces you to read on, you’re scratching your head wondering how the heck she DOES that.

Your story often rests on the shoulders of the protagonist. Is this a believable character? Do you root for him or her? Because basically it is a very hard thing to create a “good” person on the page that your reader is going to fall in love with. Because we readers know that we are flawed, we are often inclined to side with the similarly flawed people we meet between a book’s covers. Katniss, on the other hand, is so good in so many ways. She sacrifices herself for her sister. She tries to save people in the game. But there’s almost a jock mentality to her too. Katniss can figure out the puzzles and problems in the game, but when it comes to emotional complexity she’s sometimes up a tree. Most remarkable to me was the fact that Katniss could walk around, oblivious to romance, and not bug me. Seriously, nothing gets under my skin faster than heroines who can’t see that their fellow fellas are jonesing for them. You just want to bonk the ladies upside the head with a brick or something. The different here is maybe the fact that since Katniss knows that Peeta has to play a part, she uses that excuse (however unconsciously) to justify his seeming affection for her. Thems smart writing.

Oh! And did I mention the dialogue at all? The humor? Yep, there’s humor. We’re talking about a story where adolescents hunger for blood, and Katniss is getting in lines about her trainers like, “And then, because it’s Effie and she’s apparently required by law to say something awful…” Good stuff. The words pop off the page. And then there’s the fact that we’re dealing with a dystopian novel where the author has somehow managed to create a believable future. No faux slang here, or casual references to extinct dolphins. There are some animals that were scientifically altered, but you can’t have a future without a couple cool details like that, right?

In general, this book throws a big fat wrench into the boy book/girl book view of child/teen literature. People love to characterize books by gender. It stars a boy? Boy book. A girl? Girl book. Now take a long lengthy look at the first book in the Hunger Games Trilogy. It stars a girl… and a boy too. There’s a lot of hunting, fighting, and survival… and a lot of romance, kisses, and cool outfits. There’s strategy, the world’s most fabulous fashion designer, weapons and a girl who knows how to fight. This is not a book that quietly slots into our preconceived stereotypes. And you know what happens to books that span genders? They sell very well indeed. That is, if you can get both boys and girls to read them.

The age range? Well, for most of this story I would have said ten and up. I mean, yeah the basic premise is that a lot of teenagers go around killing one another, and sure there’s some romance to deal with, but none of it really seems inappropriate… until a final death scene appears in the book. I won’t give any details, but suffice it to say it is gruesome. There are definite horror elements to it as well, so with that in mind I am upping my recommendation to 12 and up. I’m sure that there are 10-year-olds out there who’ve seen much worse stuff on cable, just as there are 12-year-olds who’ll freak out ten pages in. Still, I’m more comfortable recommending it for the older kids rather than the younger. You’ll see why.

It occurs to me that there has never been a quintessential futuristic gladiator book for kids. That is undoubtedly the roughest term you can give this book. Now I’m not a person who cries easily when she reads something, particularly something for kids. Yet as I was taking a train to Long Island I found myself tearing up over significant parts of this story. It’s good. And it’s so ridiculous that a work of science fiction like this could even be so good. You think of futuristic arena tales and your mind instantly sinks to the lowest common denominator. What Collins has done here is set up a series that will sink its teeth into readers. The future of this book will go one of two ways. Either it will remain an unappreciated cult classic for years to come or it will be fully appreciated right from the start and lauded. My money lies with the latter. A contender in its own right.

It took me a while to get to this book because I never saw it out of my two daughters’ hands. They devoured it! Once I read it, I understood. This is the second book I have reviewed this month that had a powerful female protagonist (other being ‘Graceling’).

I found the book to be well written with a fantastic pacing. Their is violence in there, but not so over the top as to be distracting. Intimate scenes are sparingly written so as not to be too embarassing (something I greatly appreciated as a dad!!) The rage against the system theme is prevalent enough to notice, but not as overbearing as say…. Ayn Rand or Terry Pratchett.

All in all, I highly recommend this book for kids from 12 up. The ending leads me to believe that this will be a series. I imagine I will be pre-ordering as soon as it’s available. Congratulation Ms. Collins!!

All the best,

Jay

So this is what keeps troubling me about the book: as an adult reader, I cannot decide if this is merely a guilty pleasure, or a book with substance that, as the cover says, “explores the effects of war and violence on those coming of age.” Professional reviewers and Amazon reviewers alike seem to agree that the book has a political angle, and the inside cover goes so far as to say that it combines “suspense and philosophy.” To which I can only say…. if that is true, then it is certainly philosophy-lite, even for a YA novel. I will, however, grant that it does have “unsettling parallels to our present.”

The reason that I feel so ambivalent about it is that it is such a gripping and suspenseful read; it truly is difficult to put down. But it is so in a way that reminds me of a video game: different opponents, each with specific abilities; changing settings which present new obstacles and hazards; a limited life-line buttressed with revitalizing finds or gifts. Indeed, it’s called “The Hunger Games”—duh, right? And yet something about all of this bothers me.

It’s structured like your standard voyage and return narrative, with many elements of the hero’s quest. But in this book there is no Grail, no Dragon. The reward is simply your life, and the villains are merely pawns like the protagonist. This lowers the stakes and even calls into doubt the idea of heroism. Is fighting for your life heroic? I tend to see self-defense as something very different from heroism.

The real evildoers are, of course, the game makers and the society which permits this atrocity to take place, but this aspect is never really developed (at least there is no climactic confrontation, and not much of a build up to one either).

True: the reader cannot help but to feel disgust for the game makers. True: one is appalled by the extent to which the media forces people to create a false persona and to live a lie. But that is really the extent of the social commentary, and I felt like some opportunities were lost. Ultimately, I found myself asking: Is this enough?

You want the characters to live (they are, after all, archetypes, and hence parts of us all—the courageous, the doomed, the saved). But saying that the Roman Games are wrong as you sit down to watch the gladiators as they are thrown to the lions is not a critique, and shouldn’t make us feel any less guilty about watching. In the end, are we the readers just as bad as the spectators in the book? If so, then we’ve been duped. And I don’t think this was Collins’ intention.