"The Giver" (1993) by Lois Lowry REVIEW

With the movie coming out this Friday, I thought it best to read this book as soon as possible.

Jonas lives in the community, the perfect place to live. There is no such thing as pain or suffering and everyone does their job they are assigned to. Jonas, however, is not assigned a career like everyone else, but selected. He is now the new Receiver of Memories, being trained by a man who makes himself only known as the Giver. As the Giver trains Jonas for this special role, he also shows Jonas that there is more to his world than the community. There's history to it, both good and bad.

The Giver, a children's novel, is a book that it surprisingly well done. At least, until the last thirty pages. Everything before that, though, is fantastic. Lois Lowry executes the story from an angle of a naive boy, having Jonas learn the difference between what is morally right and what is morally wrong. The pacing is steady and though the dialogue feels out of place at times, the story and morals are quite remarkably well told. However, when the action starts on the thirtieth-to-last page, the book goes downhill. A long story that could easily be extended to another 150 pages is squished together and the book leaves us with an extremely open ending and plenty of questions. Sadly, this brings the book down in ratings quite a lot.

However, given these faults, The Giver is a remarkable book worthy of its Newbery medal and I highly recommend it to older kids and adults.

Rating: 10+
3.5/5 Stars

Having now seen the trailer for the movie, I must say I am rather excited for it and it looks to me that it may be better than the book!

You can purchase your copy of the book here.

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