Review #67 - The Giver by Lois Lowry

The Giver is one of the "classics" of the YA dystopia genre. And in a lot of ways I found it cleverer than the hunger games because apart from the lack of choice in birthday presents and careers this society isn't that bad when you discover this world. 

This book is very short and very basic. At times it did come across as too simplistic in its language. Also, setting up the world was very much at the expense of the plot speed which was a real shame. In a lot of dystopias they use the plot to build the world but in this they were two very different things. I did find it a little boring in places but the fact it's tiny really meant that I didn't have to push through it.

The story is very clever. It progresses well and the plot twists are unexpected. I didn't guess any of this book and that was really wonderful and the characters were really great as was the dialouge. Perceptions of characters were very much set up via the dialouge and that was really good. 

The way emotions were tackled was extremely good. There's this comical bit when Phoebe, who's the younger sister, says she felt anger at a situation so she balls her hand into a fist to represent it.

I would recommend this if:

You are dystopia crazy

You want an early dystopian novel

You want a book that deals with perceptions really well.

I gave this three stars