The Giver by Lois Lowry

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I mean, obviously The Giver is great. I somehow never had to read it as a kid; so I guess when the YA inflection point came, I didn’t have the same frame of reference everybody else had. Anyway, a lot of writers seem to have copied it. It’s funny, though, how the originator catches some subtlety that the imitators miss: my assumption based on the genre was that everybody in the authoritarian-controlled village would be A) brainless, B) abusive controllers or C) plucky protagonists, none of whom are happy. But in The Giver, as in life, most people are pretty happy with the society they’re born into and never leave and know nothing other than.

Also, the scene with the dad and the baby near the end has some psychological subtlety and what seems to me like genuine wisdom: Institutionalized killing is never, or almost never, done out of anger or hate. It’s done out of tenderness. It’s for their own good.



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