Today, I finished The Giver by Lois Lowry. I picked this out, originally, because I am trying to read Newberry Books, since I missed so many of them growing up. Then, it appeared on Sarah Miller's list for the Something About Me Challenge. I picked it up and read it quickly. It is a very short little book, but the depth is amazing. It is, as I have heard other reviewers explain it, "chilling." There are startling details that you take in little by little throughout the story, the most haunting for me being the absence of color.
The entire story left me feeling very disturbed. I tried to contemplate living in a world like thiers. Scarily enough, I understand their motivations. They have done away with racism and sexism entirely. The elderly are cared for and honored. There is no rape or murder. But even knowing the world that I do, the world that HAS all of these terrible things, I found the absences heart-breaking. There is Fiona's beautiful red hair, rendered gray for the sake of "sameness." There are gray apples and gray flesh. There are "releases" that simply devastate my soul.
I hope I never live to see a world like the one in this book. At the same time, I wish I could have imagined and written sucha gripping piece of young adult literature.
Heather
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