~Thought provoking

At first glance, everything is fine and dandy. Twelve-year-old Jonas lives in a peaceful world where everybody is happy. Or . . . if not happy, satisfied, anyway. Content. In The Giver, Lois Lowry's Newbery Medal book, we find a black and white world where everything is controlled, contained, and restrained. Plans are made and executed for the good of the community. Life goes on day after day as expected.

Jonas, however, is not allowed to continue behind the gray veil and live his life in contented ignorance. At twelve, when the children are given their jobs in society, Jonas is chosen to be the holder of memories. And once he starts seeing in living color, there is no going back. The story world chilled me and the conflict gripped me from the beginning. I wanted Jonas to see clearly, to escape the foggy gauze of forgetfulness that his elders had laid over the land.

I found The Giver exciting, interesting all the way through with never a lag, and no technical problems to interrupt the story. The descriptions in Lowry's provocative world were clear and crisp. The world is foreign and it doesn't feel quite right. I wanted to read on to see what exactly was wrong with it and what would become of the people living there.

Ms. Lowry's characters were varied and they all played their parts well. Their motivations worked. I had a bit of problem with the smart, educated mother being so stupid. But Lowry pulled it off so I could believe it. The mother was blind; brains had nothing to do with it. Ms. Lowry also painted her characters with some depth so that it was easy for me to sympathize even with the stupid ones who destroyed life in an effort to improve living. Jonas' father, in particular, felt real. There could be no doubt that he was a loving man, even as he erred so heinously and bought into the lie he lived.

And yet, even as varied and as interesting as her characters were, they didn't remain with me when the book was done. This is partially because, while I could keep them all separate as I read, in the end they really were all very similar. In a world where everything goes according to plan there are no surprises. All the characters have to follow the set pattern. So, unavoidably, most of the characters were clones of one another. They all stumbled stupidly along. It wasn't their fault. The had no history and no vision, after all. And yet, it was impossible to know and love them (or hate them even) when they had no personalities.

I was disappointed, also, with the end of the book. After investing several hours in a book I want the storyteller to give me an ending and not to leave things open to interpretation. It is not my story. I didn't dream up these people or their universe, and I don't know what happens to them in the end unless the creator of the story tells me.

I wanted to see more of the wide world, see more societies, see what lay ahead for Jonas. I felt rather cheated that all this time I had been working toward freedom for Jonas and I never was allowed to really taste it. If not for the ending I'd have given the book five stars for sure. It's a big book . . . I mean an ambitious book dealing with big issues, not an ordinary teen-age pop culture book filled with boy-crazy girls. But endings are so very important. As it is now, I have a couple of other Lowry books on my shelf that I've not read because the ending of The Giver left me feeling dissatisfied with her writing.

Still, I highly recommend this book for children, ten and up, and their parents. The world Ms. Lowry created was well-developed and haunting, the prose was very good, and the conflict is just the kind of thought-provoking stuff that middle grade and teen readers should be grappling with. Euthanasia,abortion, welfare--all of these things can be discussed within the context of this novel. The Giver doesn't offer as many answers as I would have liked but it certainly urges the reader to think critically and that is a great thing for a children's book to do.

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Copyright © 2005 Sally Apokedak