Wow! I wasn't expecting something so grim and dark for a book geared towards kids. All the elements of a dystopian novel are here: blinding happiness in the beginning, shocking revelations, and a final struggle rears it's ugly head. I can't quite put my finger on what made this so enjoyable, but I loved every moment. For such a short book I felt like it was over before I knew it. Definitely check it out. I'll be checking out the other entries to this series.

I Loved it, I remember reading it on the beach :D, Major worldbuilding, a chilling and exciting story line, a very interesting dystopian novel.


In this book everyone is identical, choices are very limited. Every aspect of life is controlled and decided by elders of the community, everyone is content simply because they don't know any different, but Jonas (the hero) is different, he sees things no one else can see.

"Jonas's world is perfect. Everything is under control. There is no war or fear or pain. There are no choices. Every person is assigned a role in the Community. When Jonas turns twelve, he is singled out to receive special training from The Giver. The Giver alone holds the memories of the true pain and pleasure of life. Now, it is time for Jonas to receive the truth. There is no turning back."

Jonas is chosen to be the next "Receiver", The giver is the only man in the community who holds memories like color, sun, pain, war, courage, happiness, Love, emotions because the people can’t handle them and in case they needed guidance, Jonas slowly receives memories from the giver, Through his training, he discovers secrets of the time before theirs, and discovers that the Community is not as perfect as it seems.

“The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.”

5 stars

“The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.”

I first read The Giver in the 8th grade as a school assignment. For homework we were to read the first chapter... I read the entire book in one night instead. Here I am again many years later, and I devoured this book all in one day. Such a powerful story, and one that I think everyone needs to read.

In a world of sameness, Jonas is excited to receive his life assignment. Much to his surprise, he is selected to be a Receiver. Once he begins his training, he finds that the current Receiver is to give Jonas memories of past to save for the wisdom of the community. And with these memories, Jonas begins to awaken.

“We gained control of many things. But we had to let go of others.”


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Re-read in preparation for the film--still powerful, and so impressive, especially in its simplicity and brevity. Interesting to see its DNA in many other dystopian YAs that have come along in recent years.

In case you're interested, I thought the film was pretty good, and the actor who played Jonas was perfectly cast. The changes they made to original story actually worked to the adaptation's benefit, and in some ways it expands the original themes and relationships in the book.

Full review: http://www.themidnightgarden.net/2014...

*******SPOILER ALERT*******

“I don't know what you mean when you say 'the whole world' or 'generations before him.'I thought there was only us. I thought there was only now.”

n  n
Read the book, watch the movie, experience the synergy.

We don’t live in a dystopian world, but we do have a growing number of our population who believe that all that exists is NOW, that history is irrelevant, and that there is no future. It simplifies existence when a person can convince themselves of this. No need to learn about the past, no need to think about tomorrow, they just react to what they have to do today.

I insist on being a more complicated creature. What I learn about the past helps me make decisions about the present. The dreams I have for the future influence my decisions in the NOW. The past, the NOW, and the future all mingle together with very little delineation.

Reading this novel, experiencing this future society, my nerves were as jangled as if Freddy was running his metal tipped fingers down a chalkboard over and over again. That is not Lois Lowry’s fault it had much more to do with my natural abhorrence for everything and everyone being the same.

“The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without colour, pain or past.”

When Jonas turns twelve he, like every other twelve year old, is assigned his life’s work. He is delegated to the ancient, wise, old man called The Receiver. Because Jonas is now The Receiver, the old man by definition becomes The Giver. He is the vault, the keeper of memories, the only person in the community that knows there was a past. Jonas is understandably confused, overwhelmed with the concept of anything other than NOW.

Jonas is seeing red. In a monochrome society devoid of color, it is the equivalent of seeing a UFO or a Yeti. Color changes everything. As The Giver lays hands on him, transferring more and more memories to Jonas, he starts to see the world as so much more. Color creates depth, not only visually, but also mentally. Jonas’s expectations increase exponentially, quickly. He wants everybody to know what he knows, but of course that is impossible, most assuredly dangerous.

“They were satisfied with their lives which had none of the vibrancy his own was taking on. And he was angry at himself, that he could not change that for them.”

SAMENESS eliminates pain, discrimination, desire, pride, ambition, choice, thinking, and all the other things that make us uniquely human. To eliminate bad things also requires an equal measure of a loss of good things. In making this society the holes in the strainer were just too small.

The Elders select your mate for you (no homosexuality allowed in this society), but then with the elimination of desire, by a cornucopia of pharmaceuticals, it doesn’t really matter if one is gay, straight, or pansexual. Your mate is really just a partner, someone to schedule your life with. Children are assigned to you. They are nurtured by others until they are walking, and then like the stork of old they are plopped into a family unit. Two children only per couple. Women are assigned for childbearing, but only for three children, and then they are relegated as laborers for the rest of their lives. Childbearing is looked on as one of the lowest assignments a woman can be given. The Elders decide what job you will have for the rest of your life, well up until you are RELEASED.

No decisions necessary...ever.

“The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.”

The Giver, his mind not as elastic as it used to be, is consumed by the pain of the memories. He needs to speed up the process of passing some of that distress to Jonas. For the first time in his life Jonas feels real discomfort. Pills in the past had always taken away any pain he felt, from a skinned knee or even a broken arm. As The Receiver he has to understand the source of the pain, and to do so he must feel it.

There was another Receiver. She had asked to be Released. A more than niggling concern to young Jonas.

Even though the rule for The Receiver, You May Lie, bothers Jonas, it becomes readily apparent the more he learns the more imperative that rule becomes. The veil has been lifted from his eyes, and it is impossible to put the genie back in the bottle. He must choose the path that his predecessor chose ( to be released), or he must go into the great beyond of ELSEWHERE which is anywhere but there. The Giver has had to be so courageous, staying, holding memories for everyone, bearing the annoyance of only being consulted in moments of desperation, knowing so much that could be so helpful, and yet, made to feel like a dusty museum piece with the placard stating: Only Break Glass in Case of Fire.

The conclusion really bothers people, but I consider the ambiguous ending as one of my most favorite parts of the book. For those who read the books Choose Your Own Adventure, this is a Choose Your Own Ending. Pessimists and optimists seem to choose according to their natural preference for a glass half empty or a glass half full. I was struck by an odd parallel between the ending of Ethan Frome and the ending of this book. Only, being an optimist, I of course chose a very different result than the finale of Ethan Frome.

If your children have read this book or are currently reading this book, do read it. The language is by design simplistic. The concepts though are much larger, and you will enjoy your discussions with your children. This is a perfect opportunity to slip in some of your own brainwashing by including some of your own views of our current society into the dialogue.

In an attempt to make Eden they produced a Hell.

I kept thinking as I read it of the culling and the brutality that had to occur to gain this much control over human beings. I most certainly would have been RELEASED in the first wave. Compared to a future like this, we are living in a PARADISE. With all our issues, we still have choice. We have color. We have desire. We have ambition. We have a past, a future, and a present. We are not drugged zombies (well most of us, well some of us). We can read a book and see the world from another’s perspective. We can choose our mate, as dicey as that seems for most people. We can have a child, if we choose, who will be The Receiver of our collective memories and in the process we gain another generation of immortality.

Regardless of how everyone feels about this book, I would hope that most people come away from reading it feeling a little better about life as it is now, and also realize the importance of a remembered past and a hopeful future.

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4 stars for book and for narration (Ron Rifkin). Chilling dystopian tale.

It started as a 4-5 stars book but it ended much lower. it felt like the author was in a hurry to finish the book and lost all the sense of the plot in the process. Too bad. It could have been a masterpiece if it did no leave some facts that made no logical sense.

Loved the message but the book was sort of boring.

It was as if I was transplanted into their community because while reading this I was lacking in emotions just as much as they were....

4.5 HOLY STARS!

I don't remember reading a book as fast as I read this one.It was a great read.I couldn't put the book down for hours.And I must say is different from other books that I have read so this review actually is going to be somehow different from others.So let's start.

I enjoyed the beginning , maybe because it looked like dystopian kind of book and as you may know I love dystopian books.Also the colorless nature and emotionless were things that made me to continue read the book.This is one of those books that keeps getting interesting page by page.

n  What I really enjoyed from this book , the reason why I gave it 4.5 stars is because there were some moments described so beautifully and full of energy and life.Somehow they made me think about life and all things that it has , the nice , the cruel , the dreams , the goals , the feels , everything and how beautiful it is.I'm not this emotional but I must say that they were some sentences that are worth reading over and over again.This book also shows how life would be without colors, emotions, without the fun of it.It sucks!n

n  Okay..So let's move to the storyn

This book is about a boy called Jonas who lives in a world full of order and rules.He has two bestfriends, one of them is this girl called Fiona.At the ceremony he is chosen to be the reciever of memories and from that moment his life changes...

n  Characters:n

Jonas

I liked this characters because I can relate to him somehow.He is smart,caring and most important curious about things.And that curiosity leads him to the impossible known.

Fiona

What I really liked about Fiona is her rebel side.She breaks the rules almost every time but on the other side she is caring and fights for people she loves.

n  Me while reading the book(favorite sentences) :n

“For the first time, he heard something that he knew to be music. He heard people singing. Behind him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps, it was only an echo.”

“I liked the feeling of love,' [Jonas] confessed. He glanced nervously at the speaker on the wall, reassuring himself that no one was listening. 'I wish we still had that,' he whispered.

“Of course they needed to care. It was the meaning of everything.”

“...now he saw the familiar wide river beside the path differently. He saw all of the light and color and history it contained and carried in its slow - moving water; and he knew that there was an Elsewhere from which it came, and an Elsewhere to which it was going”

“Even trained for years as they all had been in precision of language, what words could you use which would give another the experience of sunshine?”

“Things could change, Gabe," Jonas went on. "Things could be different. I don't know how, but there must be some way for things to be different. There could be colors. And grandparents," he added, staring through the dimness toward the ceiling of his sleepingroom. "And everybody would have the memories."

“And here in this room, I re-experience the memories again and again it is how wisdom comes and how we shape our future.”

“The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.”

It's so worth reading.I highly recommendit to you if you life dystopian books!

Also the movie is out now!




*Pictures from the review are not mine, I took them mostly from Google images or Tumblr*

This was a quick read and, despite all the 4 and 5 star reviews out there, a rather average one in my humble opinion. The story is okay, the message (we are all entitled to have choices, don't let anybody else think for yourself, blah blah blah) is okay, the characters are all transparent (yes, even the Giver himself) and I can't help but think that such a theme was tackled before (Animal Farm, Anthem or Fahrenheit 451 come to mind; even City of Ember to some extent, although it was written way after The Giver) and in a much better and satisfying way. The ending is a bit of a letdown but, failing to care for the main character, I wasn't too bugged by it either. So there you have it.

I loved this book just as much as I did when I read it in school. So great.

Jonas' world seems like a utopia of peace and harmony with little conflict and everyone doing their job. That is, until Jonas is selected to be the new Receiver of Memories and learns utopia isn't all it's cracked up to be...

Once upon a time, sometime in the nebulous nineties when the only things I read were Star Wars and Anne Rice, my brother was assigned to read this in school. My mom read it after him and assigned it to me. Now, years later, my wife and I read it together. It still holds up.

The world Jonas lives in is one largely free of choices and free of strong emotions. People are assigned jobs, assigned families, and largely assigned lives. No one remembers the past or even realizes they're being denied freedom by no being able to decide things for themselves. No one except The Receiver of Memories, that is. As Jonas studies under the previous Receiver of Memories, the titular Giver, he sees all the things lurking under the surface of his perfect world.

I don't know much about Lois Lowry's influences but I see some Brave New World in this book's lineage with a dash of Handmaid's Tale. It's written as a YA book but I was an adult both times I read and enjoyed it. The book explores such themes as family, the value of choice, the importance of history, the dangers of blind conformity, and things of that nature. It's also a great story.

Two decades after I first read it, The Giver is still a great read. Once my wife recovers, we'll probably attack the other books set in the same world. 5 out of 5 stars.