Author: Suzanne Collins
What can I say about a book which has received so much publicity, especially recently?
I liked the movie.
I really, really liked the book.
Collins created a character in Katniss Everdeen who is truly heroic, who has done everything she has had to do in order to keep herself and her small family alive, and yet still has some growing to do, as befits a 16-year-old girl.
The futuristic dystopia is a bit hard to figure out, but from a narrative point of view, it works, because the story is told in first-person present from Katniss's point of view. A teenage girl whose entire existence is survival would have no reason to know the details behind the creation of this society, but she exhibits the distrust and closed aspect of someone who knows that she's being used, and is expendable.
The Hunger Games is a fast read, in great part because Collins does not clutter her pages with extraneous description. She moves the story, and puts us deeply in Katniss's thoughts. And that story is quite satisfying, logically and emotionally.
I want to read the next book. Soon!
2 comments:
"The futuristic dystopia is a bit hard to figure out"
Interesting comment. To me one of the problems I had reading the series was that it was all too close to home.
Rulers with little or no connection to reality, the ever widening gap between haves and have nots, the growing fascination with watching others hurt themselves and other ("Reality" TV) and on and on.
I had seen the movie before I read the book, so I tried hard to build a picture of the culture solely from the book, and realized there were many aspects of it which Katniss did not know well. The people who made the movie clearly knew the entire series, and built the visuals with that in mind.
Since writing this review, I have read book two -- obvious to you since you commented on that review, too. I am appreciating these stories even more as I think of them as allegory or extended metaphor. Details which are unbelievable if taken as pure sci-fi are much more acceptable when read as commentary on our current societal situation.
Thanks for the comments.
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