The Giver
- Oct 23, 2022
- 2 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
★★★☆☆
As a general rule, I don’t read a lot of young adult fiction. Adult literacy is appalling low—the average American reads at a seventh- or eighth-grade level—and I suppose I feel like I’m doing my bit by not reading down. Still, I’m human, and inasmuch as reading what you want constitutes some form of transgression, from 1999 to 2010, I read the 13 books in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events and the last five books of C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia. I haven’t read a YA book since. Until now.
I’d never heard of The Giver. Apparently, it’s kind of a big deal. It won the Newbery Medal, which is awarded by the American Library Association “to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.” It’s become a standard in middle school classrooms. And it was turned into a film starring Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Taylor Swift, Alexander Skarsgård, and Katie Holmes. Of course, not having kids (or following YA circles), it stands to reason I’d never heard of it. It was only fitting, then, that while having dinner with friends, who had just returned from dropping their youngest off at college, this book should come up.
I might have my facts wrong, but I think we were talking about the recent spate of book bannings, which led to talking about Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World, both of which I’d recently read, which led to The Giver, which had been assigned to their youngest when he was in middle school, and which my friend, his mother, had read along with him. She thought I’d like it, and she was right: I liked it. I just didn’t love it.
I didn’t love it because it wasn’t written for me. It was written for children, using language and storytelling appropriate for them. For that audience, I think The Giver is likely a powerful book—and an excellent introduction to dystopian fiction. But, as you would expect for a novel geared toward kids, it’s a simple story simply told, lacking the depth of narrative I expect and the potency of language I crave. (For what it’s worth, I had the same issues with the Events and Narnia books, and while I finished both series, my interest and enjoyment, especially with the former, began to wane with each new release.)
Considering that, according to a 2021 Gallup poll, 17% of Americans don’t read books at all, and of those who do, they’re reading fewer books now than they were 30 years ago, I’m happy for (nearly) any reading anyone is willing to do. You could certainly do a lot worse than The Giver.
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