Monday 16 April 2012

Books at blogtime: The Hunger Games

I read The Hunger Games for three reasons:

1.  B wants to see the film and I won't see a film until I've read the book it's based on.
2.  I wanted to see what all the fuss was about
3.  I was expecting it to be utter tosh and I was in the mood for a bit of mindless nonsense.

What I didn't expect was that it would make me think, and that I would be putting it on my list of books I want my children to read*.

Clearly, on some levels, it is utter tosh.  It's not great literature: you don't gasp over the quality of the writing or the perfection of the imagery, but the plot grabs and carries and, more importantly, it surprises and makes you (or at least me) think.


I raced through the first two, much as I had expected to - grabbed by the story: wanting to know, while already half-knowing (because you do, don't you?), what was going to happen, but also mildly irritated not only by the amazing lack of sensitivity and self-awareness shown by Suzanne Collins' main character, but also that she didn't go further and make more of the reality tv aspect, to show how it impacted on the viewer, to analyse what would make an entire people accept the televising of a fight to the death between children as normal, acceptable, even desirable - and then I was confounded by the third.

Because I didn't know what was going to happen.  Far from it.  I thought I did, and then it never came.  I don't want to go into detail because I do want you to read it but I thought I'd get black and white, victory and defeat, triumphalism and dejection.  Instead I got moral ambiguity, trauma and human suffering. 

If my children will, as I am sure they will, play computer games and watch films in which good is good, and bad is bad, and the end always justifies the means, I am very pleased that they will also have this, just to remind them that life isn't always, or perhaps never is, like that.

*A very lengthy work in progress, starting with Beatrix Potter, A A Milne and Roald Dahl and progressing through Kenneth Grahame, Charles Kingsley, Johanna Spyri, Frances Hodgson Burnett, H Rider Haggard, JJK Rowling, Philip Pullman (and not just the Northern Lights ones), Tolkein, Captain Marryat, Elisabeth Goudge, Noel Streatfeild, E Nesbit,  Ann Holm (I am David), Ian Serrailier (The Silver Sword), T H White, George Macdonald, Anna Sewell, R D Blackmore, Judith Kerr (we've started with Mog and The Tiger who came to Tea and will move on...), Rosemary Sutcliffe, Eleanor Porter (Pollyanna), Susan Coolidge, Louisa May Allcott, Laura Ingalls Wilder, L M Montgomery, Mary O'Hara, Aesop, R M Ballantyne, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mary Mapes Dodge (The Silver Skates), J Meade Faulkner, Arthur Ransome  and on and on through many others that I have read and remembered or that you are going to recommend...

10 comments:

  1. Ooo oo oo. Do you think it's suitable for a 9 year old to read? My son is desperate to read it but I wasn't sure if the themes were too 'grown up' for him?

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  2. Hmmm. Tricky. Gut feeling, no. I'd probably wait until he was a teenager. It's pretty graphic and unpleasant in parts. But.... I read a whole load of stuff when I was too young for it (Jane Eyre at 9 anyone?!) and I think much of it just passed me by, only to be picked up on a later re-read. I certainly don't remember being scarred for life by anything I read too young.

    So I think it depends on him. There is a lot of death, and a lot of violence and suffering, and only you'll know how well he'll deal with that. Do you still read to/with him at bedtime? If so, I'd say definitely go for it. It's in chapters, so you could read it together and then maybe discuss any of the biggies...

    Oh, and there's quite a lot of kissing too (tho' only kissing, don't panic!), so if the mutiliation doesn't gross him out, that might!

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    1. He's made of quite tough stuff (he's grown up on Doctor Who and X Men (!). Might be one we read together then. We're doing that with Harry Potter at the mo as they're getting rather dark

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    2. Let me know how he gets on! When did you start him on Harry Potter by the way? B is thinking of starting with L once she's at school (in August) - and then not doing them all in a row, straight away, because clearly she's not ready for the later ones yet. I'm not sure that that's still not too early (she's 5 on Saturday).

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  3. Although there were some seriously huge and depressing themes in the third book, especially for a young adult readership, I kind of thought it was great that she took the tone there. It was so very real that the characters would be affected that way. A week after finishing, and it's still on my mind.

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    1. Me too. I really expected her to cop out and avoid doing what she did - especially given its audience. I thought it was brilliant that she didn't. As you say, still on my mind...

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  4. My son was quite lucky that he was a 'Red House Reader' for Red House children's books. From about the age of seven he would be sent books, often proof copies, to review for their magazine. It was great fun for him but I do wonder now whether he missed out on some of the classics as he was busy with lots of new titles. I've found as a teenager he's gone off fiction reading. I'm told this will return but at the moment I'm quite sad that I can't seem to get him interested.

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    1. I'm sure it will return. I reckon once a reader, alwasys a reader. And he can catch up on the Wind in the Willows then...

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  5. Your kids are going to be busy...

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    1. Absolutely. They're also going to be champion sports players, award winning artists and independent thinkers of the first water.

      Just for the avoidance of doubt.

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