Fiction Book Club

It's been about a year since I read the book but I really enjoyed it. I think I read it in an evening or two since it was really short.

I loved drawing parallels between The Giver and other dystopias I've read - Matched in particular seemed to take a lot of inspiration from it.

I thought it was interesting that Brave New World's take was "everybody belongs to everybody" and letting sex be a totally unattached thing, vs in The Giver where everyone is given pills to stop their "stirrings" at an early age.

I choose to believe that Jonas and Gabriel made it to another area with people... because it would be too sad if they didn't :x

I gave The Giver 5/5, it's a book I really wish I'd read when I was a kid.

have you read the rest of the series? It really helps you come to terms with the way the book ended.

I haven't yet, but I intend to :) I just haven't had a chance to get around to the others!

You definitely should read the others. I don't think they're nearly as good as The Giver was, but I think they're worth a read.

1) I really enjoyed it. I read it in an afternoon, one swift gulp. I think it was so genius how Lowry didn't give away how much the world was lacking in comparison to ours until later in the book, and then WHAM it was all there.

2) I found Jonas and The Giver to be the two big draws, and the others to be very much secondary. Jonas was a typical kid, which I liked. I don't identify well when kids are older or wiser than their years. It puts me off. So a typical kid was good. And The Giver was interesting, though not deep. One thing I really didn't like was the lack of worldbuilding in the sense of how the world came to be the way it is. We see a bit of it (lack of hills, climate control, etc) but not a lot. I wanted more. The novel had a very classic feel to me, and I was surprised that it was published in the early 90's.

3) Oh man. I don't know what actually happened, but the ambiguity of the ending drove me bonkers. It is like the end of Inception. I like clear endings, even sad ones.

4) I think it is about population control more than anything. In Brave New World, sexuality was encouraged, but reproduction was discouraged and familial bonds were abolished. In The Giver, we have kind of the opposite. The familial bond is really important to this society, but the entire sex drive AND reproduction are removed from society as a whole. The intensity of the family bond can be seen in how children view their parents as their parents, regardless of the knowledge that they were born to someone who was given the job of birth mother. Unlike what seems to be most adopted children in today's society, they have no desire to know their birth mothers.

5) I can see that The Giver took inspiration from Brave New World. As far as newer dystopians, I can't think of much that has flipped the switch from utopia to dystopia the same way these books have (that I have read anyways). Partials (Dan Wells) kind of did, but with a war to aid it.

6) Four out of Five stars. I really didn't like the ending.

1) You know, I wish I remember what I thought about this back when I read it for school. Because when I reread it last year, I was just kind of "meh" about it because I've read so many more dystopias. Which were doubtless inspired by this one.

3) I always thought he was alive, and they'd come up to a cabin with people or something. They didn't use to kill people in YA back then (as I recall), only dogs. ;-)

4) I think it's because this is a YA book written in the early 90s. ;-) Honestly, it's been too long since I've read this to really get into it.

5) I'm just going to say that it's cool we're reading Shades of Grey just after this.

6) I think I gave it a 3.

1) I thought it was quite fascinating, especially when I started to pick a part how many dystopian novels in the YA stream based their work off of this one. Overall, I found it to be a pleasant surprise to read.

2) I thought Jonas was adorable for the most part, well up until the very end. I thought the Giver as a character was quite interesting, though his leaving made me feel quite sad because he left poor Jonas at such a critical moment. :(

3) I have no idea what the ending really was in a lot of cases and that kinda sorta cheesed me off. I want to believe that Jonas and Gabriel were safe, but considering the tone of the novel, I'm unsure of how true that really feels considering also the circumstances they faced at the end. CLARITY IS GOOD SOMETIMES.

4) I find both novels rather disturbing in terms of how sexuality is handled. In BNW it felt like everyone belongs to the community so therefore there was no repercussions in their actions. Where I think the two novels are the same is that sex is a form of control for them -- by controlling it, there's a sense that "they" (the controllers) know exactly as to what is happening in their world.

5) I think it really does have to do with the atmosphere. There's nothing hopeful in the Giver, and for every glimmer of happiness that appears, sadness seems to envelope everyone to the point where nothing feels like it will truly get better. But then again, I think this is true in a lot of dystopian fiction.

6) I gave it a 4/5, mostly because the ending made me cranky.

1. This has always been a favorite book. I didn't read it this round, but it's fresh in my mind from 2 years ago.

2. The world in general always creeped me out. I got chills whenever it was described, but it can't leave me now that I've imagined it. I haven't forgotten it since I first read the book in middle school.

3. I knew some people who were mad at the cliff hanger, but I find it uplifting. Lowry seems to be encouraging us to go out and find our own world.

4-5. I don't read much dystopia, but this book certainly is the gateway novel for them.

6. This is definitely a 5!

1) Awesome book, great middle grade dystopia. Like others mentioned, you can see how much it inspired other novels (Matched). I gave it 4/5 stars on Goodreads.

2) Well, we really only get to know Jonas and The Giver fairly well. Jonas was an interesting character in that he didn't have anything extreme going on for his personality. But he wasn't dull. It also helped create a sharp contrast between the end and the beginning of the book in terms of his character growth.

As for The Giver, I couldn't help but feel all of the feels for him. He's got it rough.

I also found Jonas's parents to be interesting. They both didn't want to have to be responsible for releasing others. I think it was especially sad with his dad because he obviously had such a caring nature and he knew what he was doing, but he was programmed not to care...yet it was obvious he really did deep down.

3) I really hate ambiguous endings. I am very convinced they died. I'm a Debby Downer, sorry :(.

4) This is a good question. I think repressing sexuality kind of goes hand in hand with repressing everything else, so it made sense. As someone else mentioned, it also helps with population control. Can't exactly have accidents if no one wants to have sex anyway. I found it fascinating how in Brave New World the society took the opposite approach. By encouraging sex and not staying monogamous, it really takes away the feeling that it's something special and really discourages closer, deeper relationships. This isn't to say that someone who isn't monogamous can't have deep relationships, only that if someone was encouraged to when they didn't want to, it would really make sex just a thing people do instead of a more special thing people do. It's fascinating to me, idk, I just thought how things were done in Brave New World was so interesting.

5) Matched is extremely similar. The society has everyone being observed and then told what they are best at and what should be chosen for them. The makers and shakers of that society try to do it in such a way that the members of the society feel comforted that they have everything done for them as opposed to feeling oppressed.

Another one I can think of is Delirium, where people are given a procedure once they turn 18 that prevents them from ever feeling love. This society has the similarity in that feelings are discouraged, especially sexual feelings (although love isn't always sexual.) It's kinda weird in Delirium because the society as a whole could be a lot more oppressive...and it'd make more sense if it was, but whatever. Oh, they also match people up together, but for loveless whatever marriages.

5) 4/5 stars, whoops, said that at the beginning.

1) Ummm I'm totally in the minority, because I thought it was terrible. XD;; It was overly simplistic. Middle schoolers are capable of processing a lot more complex stuff than this author seems to think they are, and this book would have frustrated the heck out of me had I read it at the target age group. In addition, I thought the "message," moral, what-have-you, was also overly simplified and even a bit naive, privileged, and black-and-white. It rather smacked of anti-socialist propaganda and that bugged me.

2) I thought it was an interesting post-apocalyptic world and pretty creepy in various ways. Especially in how docile and rational everyone was about everything. Would have been nice to have been given some more details on various aspects of this society.

3) To me it seemed pretty clear that they died. His life flashes before his eyes, he talks about moving through space and time towards a bright light, he doesn't feel cold anymore, etc. However, considering this is the first of a series, the author probably found some way to magically make them survive. :p

4) Population control/breeding program. I never got around to reading Brave New World so I can't compare the two.

5) None, I hope. :p

6) I gave it a 2. :p Some reviewers on GR go into better detail and word it a lot better than I have.

1) Overall, what did you think of The Giver?
I enjoyed it up until the end. I thought the ending was very WTF-ery but up until the last few chapters I was enjoying the story.

2) What did you think of the general world and the characters (Jonas, The Giver, Gabriel)?
The world was creepy as hell. I think that's why I don't like the utopia/dystopia in fiction much, because if we were all expected to be the same I think I would probably go mad. I liked that Jonas was just an ordinary kid who suddenly had this huge thing thrust onto him; he reacted as I would have expected a twelve-year-old to react. I felt really sorry for the Giver and all the pain he had to go through. What happened to Rosemary was really sad. I can only imagine how trapped she felt.

3) The ending can be interpreted in a few different ways. What do you think happened at the end, and why?
It seemed like they died, which was sad. I had been hoping for the ending to be more along the lines of Jonas changing the community and breaking down the sameness from the inside.

4) What role do you think the repression of sexuality has in this society? How is it different from Brave New World (if you read that with us)?
They're both about avoiding attachment in their own way, I think. In The Giver, it seems to be more about population control. If I had to guess, people don't have their own kids in the community mainly to avoid attachment in case of an issue with the child, like with Gabriel or the twins. In BNW, where it's the opposite, it was more about giving people a release valve, I think, and the idea of everyone belonging to one another, to discourage jealousy and attachment.

5) How do you think some newer dystopias have taken inspiration from The Giver?
Let's see... normal kid living in a uptopian (or dystopian) society until they are chosen for/discover something special about themselves and learn the truth about their world, then decide to change it. It's pretty much the general story structure for every YA book in this genre that I've read in the past few years, and a few of the 'adult' ones as well. So yeah, it's pretty obvious that The Giver has had a huge influence on this particular genre, but I also think that Brave New World had an influence on The Giver as well.

6) What would/did you rate The Giver out of 5?
I gave it a 4 because up until the last few chapters I was really enjoying the story, and I wish the author had taken it a different way.

(Edit: spelling, wheee!)

Edited at 2013-03-14 09:09 pm (UTC)