I have absolutely no idea where I was in
school when it was time to read this book.
Obviously I wasn’t there because I have never read it until now. Maybe my teacher did not assign it to be
read? Doubtful. Anyway, The Giver is this month’s book club
book and I absolutely loved it.
The Giver is a great dystopian book
written before the dystopian craze. I
wish I had read it back when I was a kid, though I don’t think I would have
fully appreciated it then. Jonas lives
in what he thinks is a utopian society.
Everyone looks the same, everyone does the same daily activities. Then when the children reach a certain age,
they are chosen to train for their future contributions to society. Jonas is chosen to train to be the next “Giver,”
which is really just a fancy name for the keeper of memories. Every memory.
Ever had. By anyone. From the beginning of time. When Jonas is given these memories, he can
feel them – he experiences them. Some
are happy and some are excruciating.
Now, I first thought, “Why didn’t they
just write the memories down. You know,
in a book?” But I guess that would have defeated the whole purpose of keeping
the rest of society in the dark about the way things had previously been. In the society they lived in, there was no
love, no color, no diversity. Everything
was black and white and writhe with sameness.
This book did a great job of telling the
story of how Jonas received the memories and how he handled knowing the truth
of what was life could be like. While
sometimes I felt he made some pretty boneheaded decisions, he was a pretty
admirable character. I cannot wait to
read the remainder of the quartet. I
even went out and bought the really pretty hardbound copy of the quartet for my
collection.
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