How Not to Write a Series or {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Giver Quartet by Lois Lowry, Part 3 by Karen S. Wiesner

 

How Not to Write a Series

or {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review:

The Giver Quartet by Lois Lowry, Part 3

by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Note: Be aware that there are spoilers for all the books in the series in this review that will span the next three weeks in order to give adequate summaries for all four titles along with in-depth individual and series reviews. 

The Giver Quartet, young adult fiction, by Lois Lowry features various places in a dystopian world that would seem to have no connection save for the map provided in the slipcase of the hardcovers and also available online. That statement is a little bit of an exaggeration but not by much, as we'll see over the next three weeks. 

 

For the past two weeks, I've provided full summaries of the four books contained in this thought-provoking series as well as individual reviews. This week, I'll conclude with a thorough exploration of the tragic, overarching themes in each book. 

Before I jump into that, I'll tell you that, in 2014, a movie was made of The Giver with Jeff Bridges, as a long-time champion of seeing the book come to fruition, playing the Giver and Taylor Swift cast as the "daughter" of The Giver, Rosemary, who wasn't a large character in the book itself. Clearly, she was expanded a great deal because it was said she (the Receiver of Memory before Jonas) died years ago in the story, requesting that she be released from the horrible memories she was given. In other words, she allowed herself to be killed so she didn't have to live with the burden of such atrocities committed in the past. 

The book and the movie are very different, as I suppose they had to be. In the book, the governing body of elders is all but faceless. Only the nameless Chief Elder is even vaguely defined there--and really not enough to form an opinion about her. No motives for why the past members created a society marching to the almost religious tune of "Sameness" are ultimately ascribed to the Elders, but there's a general assumption that the strife and division that led to violent wars were so horrible and devastating, someone decided it couldn't ever happen again. Better to be mindless, thoughtless automatons than people with differences, individuality, and free will. Remove the need for cultural memories and human connection, morality and good and evil, and life is grand. For who? Not for the majority of humanity, I'd speculate after reading all the books. 

For the story to be understood in that visual form, of course the movie had to impart the government with motives. This fact made me wonder if there was a justifiable reason for why the governing body in the book thought they were doing the right things by creating a society like this. Even if I can't imagine anything that could rationalize it, I desperately wanted to hear the explanation. In any case, the film extrapolates because there's nothing offered on that count in the book. Shouldn't it have been a thing in the book, though, as it was in the movie? In retrospect, it strongly feels like that was missing from the story, even though Lowry was clearly telling a simple story of a boy living in a complicated world (for which there is no explanation) who's had the veil lifted from his own mind. In his limited point of view, the answers to his questions couldn't be provided, nor did he have the power to change anything but his own life along with the one he chose to rescue. But it does feel a little like a lost opportunity with this series as a whole because the perspective of the characters Lowry chose to portray these individual stories through is far too limited to actually tell the full story in each book. 

Not only that but the POV characters, almost unilaterally, lack the curiosity and ambition to find out and act on the answers they discover. In most cases, they uncovered a little bit of the truth and retreated. Was flight to another place or, alternately, foolishly hoping to continue their existence as they had before in the place they call home a viable solution? Is hoping something good will come of their mere presence within the community--being the change they wanted to see--enough? Either option seems woefully optimistic, given the almost unchanging stasis the villages in this setting seemed locked into within this series. Even in the film, no lasting impact is made by the fight for justice and freedom. There, the Chief Elder refuses to provide freedom to the community, saying dismissively that "freedom is a bad idea because when they are left to their own devices, people make bad choices". The ending shatters like glass beneath a sweeping statement that sees the group as one body, not its individual parts who may or may not fit into such a generalized assessment. No, that was not remotely good enough. Nor, I say, was the ending presented in the book. 

Additionally, one reviewer aptly describes The Giver as "a story of a government keeping humanity bottled up in one man, the Giver" and comments on "how dangerous and cruel this burden can be". I do believe that's another reason why the author never told the story behind the governing body in the Community. Lowry was focused almost entirely on The Giver and The Recipient, Jonas and what they were doing to keep society in a state of cultural-memory lacking dormancy the Elders had decided was best for it. The author's scope was narrowed on that situation alone, resulting in the same kind of horror in which a train wreck is witnessed. The reader is so helpless as to wish he or she had never walked out the front door that morning. Or, more aptly, had never picked up the book in the first place. 

Not surprisingly, the anti-government themes have made The Giver a banned book for countless years. On this one point, I stand with Lowry about that situation--it's not okay for an organization (especially one with any kind of agenda) to make choices about what the population as a whole is allowed. That's ironically the theme of this entire series, and yet it wasn't something Lowry ran with in any of the books. She gives a hint at the injustices visited upon an unsuspecting population and yet nothing is done to rectify them by the main characters, who maybe should have felt much more compelled to act, either then or when they got old enough to actually deal with the corruption. 

Once I finished reading all four stories in the series, I was left with mixed feelings. Lois Lowry is an award-winning author of some of the most beloved young adult stories ever written. I have no doubt she deserves the accolades she's received. Her stories are unique, thought-provoking, and undeniably compelling--haunting even. The Giver is counted by many as one of the most important books ever written, as evidenced by the fact that it's required reading for many schools around the globe. These are the stories she felt compelled to tell. I can't claim she did them wrong. I can only admit I left them disappointed and thoroughly disillusioned. 

An inescapable problem I had with the four stories was that the author didn't seem to want to finish telling them and/or she didn't/couldn't tell the tales from all the necessary angles to make the plot feel fully realized--and all conflicts were so similar as to be nearly the same from one book to the next. An interview the author participated in on her website offers some crucial insight into why this was the case: "Many kids want a more specific ending to The Giver. Some write, or ask me when they see me, to spell it out exactly. And I don't do that. And the reason is because The Giver is many things to many different people. People bring to it their own complicated beliefs and hopes and dreams and fears and all of that. So I don't want to put my own feelings into it, my own beliefs, and ruin that for people who create their own endings in their minds… I like people to figure out for themselves. And each person will give it a different ending."

As a writer myself, this type of uncommitted withdrawal from story and character liability, frankly, horrifies me. Any book I write is my story. I own it in every sense of the word. I want to tell it in every aspect without letting someone else do that important work of development for me. I just do not want other people to have their hands in the telling of my story. In that way, I take full responsibility for it and everything involved in its creation. To do any less in my mind is lazy; at worst, it's irresponsible. Additionally, for my part, as a reader, I sure the heck don't want to write another person's story for them, which is essentially what Lowry is forcing her audience to do! I want to read what an author has conceived of on his or her own. Those who can't write a book themselves almost certainly don't want to be given only part of a story that requires them to fill in the missing pieces on their own. Beyond that, those who are capable of telling a story on their own may not feel right about finishing someone else's work, as I wouldn't. I freely admit I've never read Lowry's other books, and I'm unlikely to after completing this series, in large part because I'm afraid she won't finish the story she started, preferring to leave important details out rather than deprive readers of the opportunity to do that vital work for her. 

On top of that basic complaint, I find myself confused about the purpose in telling stories with protagonists that may become the heroes in their own lives and may even make their small part of the world a better place for a few others close to them, yet these "heroes" are completely powerless to stand against the Powers That Be while they're children and seemingly even after they get older. Point of fact, in Book 1, Jonas ran away from the sheep-like community with Gabe, essentially leaving everyone else living there to an eternity of blindness, under the moot care of selfish leaders and the one person--The Giver--who could have freed them all…yet didn't, couldn't, wouldn't…and we never find out why he prefers to be so ineffective against such horror. In Book 2, Kira had an opportunity to escape to a better place to live with her father and best friend Matty. Instead, she valiantly stays where she is, believing she can somehow make her home a better place, but how she can do that doesn't seem likely or even possible, nor is the reader told concrete ways she could attempt to make a meaningful difference in her community. In Book 3, Matty gives his life to allow Kira to be reunited with her father and to meet her soulmate. To what end? For what purpose? For the greater good? No. Seemingly just for a select few--the ones quite literally in closest proximity to him at the time--Kira and Jonas, and his dog. In Book 4, Kira and Jonas seem mostly interested in their own small world with their marriage and family. Jonas is no longer Leader. Seer is gone. While they're helpful in reuniting Claire and Gabe, and that's a good thing, the terrible world around them isn't getting any better. No one seems to care enough to do anything to deal with those who are either ignorant or arrogant. Individual lives are improved in each book, nothing more, nothing less. Is that really the overarching story that should have been told in these books? I don't discount the worthiness of making life better for yourself and the ones you love, but doesn't it seem…well, a bit selfish? In fiction, isn't the point to portray heroes who try to do more than simply exist beyond the moment? 

The major issues I had with The Giver Quartet are: 

1)    The author didn't create worthy protagonists with the drive or skills necessary to combat the evil in the world they live in. All the characters were far too young to be given the role of savior as well as too passive do what needed to be done--at that time or in the future. The adults in the story were content to live with the situations they were in. So the children cast in the starring roles either ran away from problems or learned to live with them, too, rather than confronting and revolting against them. In some cases, they were physically unable to fight injustice, especially on the large scale that was needed. To me, as n author, that speaks of not "outfitting characters properly" (as Dwight V. Swain calls it in Creating Characters) for the tasks readers want to see them undertake. In fiction, we want larger-than-life heroes who can change the world, compelled to stand up when others can't or won't. Even children's books these days have protagonists who are capable of might, valiant deeds. Lowry did give each of her characters some kind of "magic" power and yet even that couldn't save anyone but themselves for the most part. Why? Why not do more with these characters? Why not outfit them better for the task? Why focus exclusively on characters that aren't up to dealing with the conflicts? 

2)                   In some ways, the world in The Giver Quartet was simply too big. So much of each of the books was devoted to world building aspects (the first one, especially, at least three-fourths was devoted to describing the situation and setting). By the time the story actually started for these characters, it was essentially over for them. It was almost as if the author said to the protagonists: "Now that you've got a taste of the problem we're living with in this place, here are your choices, but you only get one option. And you'll have the next two minutes to decide what you should do." Readers were given a fleeting, longing glimpse of an overwhelming conflict within this shocking world that they wanted to see rectified, followed by a rushed response on the part of the protagonist, and little more to flesh out the entire scenario in the satisfying depth it needed to be in order to fully realize and resolve it. 

3)                 Similar to what's in the last point, the author didn't try to live up to the potential of the similar plots by telling the stories in their entirety. If you want to tell a story, tell the whole story. In fiction, no one wants to hear part of a story. How frustrating is that?! Essentially, too many things that felt necessary are missing from each of these books. The scope of the main character in each was too limited to provide what was lacking, so the reader couldn't see the conflict fully realized and fully dealt with. In other words, almost all across the board, the villains and the problems they caused couldn't be seen through a wide enough lens to be clear until it was far too late. The protagonists weren't up to the task of meeting the challenges before them, then they were rushed out of the book with the hounds of hell all but on their tails. All of that led to outcomes that could never be gratifying to any reader. In this way, none of the stories felt finished, the conflicts just left dangling there, unresolved by the ones readers were led to believe would be handling them. I would say most of the scenarios presented as conflicts felt abandoned--by both the author and the main characters who should have been allowed to provide resolutions for them in each book. And that was just sad. Undeniably, each book is memorable, but more so like a trauma that was so brutally scarring, healing could never be an option. 

4)                      Finally, while I think Gathering Blue, Book 2, was my favorite entry of the four, I can't help believing the series would have been better if Books 2 and 3 weren't part of it. I strongly think Son should have been the sequel to The Giver. Period. Gathering Blue and Messenger felt like distractions to the unified story being told in Books 1 and 4 and would have been better presented as completely separate and unrelated to The Giver and Son. Certainly, the story would have been much more cohesive and satisfying if readers had left the astonishingly abrupt ending of The Giver and gone straight into Son. In that way, the latter could become the companion to the first, as it was touted to be. In the author's defense, I'm pretty sure the publisher was left to decide how to package these books after they were cobbled together to become a series. In exactly the same way, the unifying story told in Gathering Blue and Messenger would have been much more effective if the two had been offered in a similar companion story unit, ascribing a different world and time period altogether to them outside of the series they were thrust into like a square peg in a round hole. In all honestly, the romance between Kira and Jonas was little more than a mention anyway, not important or particularly interesting--and yet that was the forced connection that was intended to tie all the books together. Simply put, it didn't really work. 

My overall sense is that this disenchantment I left The Giver Quartet with is what happens when a series isn't planned in advance or planned well. This isn't to say that the books aren't well-written; they are, or I probably wouldn't have pursued reviewing them at all. I guess I've always believed that if you can't say something nice in a review, it's better to say nothing at all. So I will state emphatically that these books are definitely worth reading, despite all my loud qualms. 

I'm left with the belief that the author wanted to create stories that had a message. Was the message simply to make you think about reality--that most people who existed in the past, currently live, and those to come in the future have, do, and will strongly disagree with how our leaders are running things, and yet we do nothing about it? Is the message that there are no larger-than life heroes in The Giver world nor the one we live in?  That no act is too small to be heroic? This was true in the case of Jonas, who risked his life to save Gabe; in the case of Kira, who insisted on staying within a corrupted community she hoped to make better with her gift; in the case of Matty, who gave his life to make the world better for two people he cared about; and in the case of Claire, who risked everything for the chance to know the child she gave birth to. 

Undoubtedly, this series made a lasting impact on me, but maybe not in the way the author intended. If the books had been published as two separate sets, in worlds distinctly removed from other each, and if the author hadn't limited the viewpoints or, better, chosen more proactive characters to effect actual change in their communities, I think I could have liked these stories much more and been able to recommend them wholeheartedly. As it is, my highest recommendation with what we've been given as a series is to read Book 4 directly after reading Book 1, then read Books 2 and 3 to fill in any holes. 

If you're a reader who doesn't mind "lady and the tiger" endings and being left to wonder what will happen in the future of a tragic world, or if you're looking for nothing more than a thoughtful portrayal of a realistically traumatizing scenario where bad people win and good people put up with it while trying to make their own little patch of the world a better place, then you'll find what you're looking for here. In any case, I strongly feel a warning is necessary for this series: Don't go into reading it believing the overall story will be neatly wrapped up any point, that there are any answers at all here, and that the bad guys will be soundly defeated eventually. Read it for the thought-provoking scenarios presented, and that's what you'll get, nothing more, nothing less. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

How Not to Write a Series or {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Giver Quartet by Lois Lowry, Part 2 by Karen S. Wiesner

 

How Not to Write a Series

or {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review:

The Giver Quartet by Lois Lowry, Part 2

by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Note: Be aware that there are spoilers for all the books in the series in this review that will span the next three weeks in order to give adequate summaries for all four titles along with in-depth individual and series reviews.

The Giver Quartet, young adult fiction, by Lois Lowry features various places in a dystopian world that would seem to have no connection save for the map provided in the slipcase of the hardcovers and also available online. That statement is a little bit of an exaggeration but not by much, as we'll see over the next three weeks. 

Last week, I provided a lengthy summary to give a clear view of the world The Giver, Book 1 of the series quartet of the same name, is set in, as well as offering an introductory review. This week, we'll continue with Books 2-4.

In truth, Lowry didn't intend to write a series based on The Giver, and for that reason I can't really fault her for how ill-conceived the subsequent books are (more on those later). In fact, interviews with the author after the release of The Giver have her laughing at the idea of committing to a return to that world, saying, "That's like asking a woman in labor if she wants to have another baby next year…maybe down the road a little bit, not too far off, maybe I could get excited about it." Seven years later, what's called by the publisher a companion book was released. To me, that description is a big stretch. The first and second books of The Giver Quartet have almost nothing in common and only moot connections are made to the world featured in the first book. 

In Book 2 of the series, Gathering Blue, we're introduced to another dystopian community that's vastly different from the one previously detailed. According to the map, "the Village" is shown on the top right. In this society, the people are ruled by another council that makes all the decisions for the people and ironically calls itself Guardians. There are unabashed social classes depicted in this loosely gathered community. The council itself occupies the upper crust, along with those who are gifted, and these few receive the best of everything. The middle class scrap and fight for their leftovers. The poor, starving, and sick live in The Fen with barely tolerable, swamp-like conditions. 

The main character Kira is deformed, and by all the laws of the Village, she should have been abandoned as a newborn by her mother in the Field of Leaving, where everyone is told that beasts and certain death await. Orphans, those injured, lame, and ill, along with the old and outcast, are all dragged there to die. After Kira's mother's death, she has to prove to the council she can contribute to society or she'll be carted off to feed wild beasts. Her skill as a weaver of color is all that saves her. But the underbelly of this community is utterly rotten, not only within the council, but in the cruel, almost inhumane population that freely abuses and cages their own children and abides in open hostility with each other. Kira with her weaving gift, Thomas with his woodworking, and another child Jo from The Fen with her ability to sing, are all but imprisoned (though in a pampered sort of way) by the council. They're forced to use their gifts in order to allow the community leaders to control the future as they envision it. In the book, it's said that, during their annual Ceremony of the Gathering, a prisoner singer with chained, scarred, and bleeding feet wears the robe Kira spent the year repairing and enhancing and uses the staff Thomas has spent the year creating to tell the tale of their people's history and future. How exactly the council utilizes the gifts that contribute to the song in order to control the future is never made clear. There were no explanations or details given to make any of that understandable in the world readers live in. 

Kira is a compelling character the reader can't help rooting for with her strength, kindness, and tenacity, along with Matty, a filthy, smelly boy from The Fen, who has plucky enthusiasm and a fearless willingness to defy authority. Disappointingly, the villains in this story are never called out for their crimes, nor are their real motives and presumed machinations illuminated. While at least one of the council members is given a face, we learn almost nothing about him or the travesties he was (again, presumably) not alone in perpetuating. These leaders just continue on with the same old same old, seemingly with the main character and the talented ones that live with her maybe making a difference in the community's future with their gifts (though it's as uncertain how Kira, Thomas, and Jo will do this as how the councils controlled the people with a song). In any case, if and when any real changes are effected in this society, it happens off-screen. Ultimately, from what I deciphered at the end of this book and in the ones that follow, Kira, Thomas, and Jo chose not to find out more about the crimes of the council or to do anything but use their gifts somehow to try to change the council's attempts to influence the future for their own (presumably selfish) purposes. The author chose to make all of that vague and unsatisfying for readers. 

Matty disappears near the end of the book. When he comes back, he returns with many surprises for Kira. One of them is her blind father, who wasn't killed by wild animals in the Field of Leaving after all, as she was told he was many years ago. Christopher found his way to a distant place called "Village of Healing" (middle left of the map), where the injured who survived the Field have built a place of mending and acceptance for all outsiders. It's here that we're given the one connection between Books 1 and 2--in the off-hand mention of an unnamed boy from that place who came to the village with a child, and both were initially unharmed. Later, we discover these people are Jonas and Gabe from The Giver, Book 1. From interviews with the author, I'm unclear whether even Lowry realized who they were when she wrote them or if she later decided to make them characters from The Giver. I suspect the latter. 

Messenger, Book 3, is Matty's story, and takes place six to seven years after The Giver and Gathering Blue. The place he lives is inhabited by those who sought refuge after being "discarded" or escaped from other places in this fictional world. Matty lives with Kira's father Christopher (called "Seer"). Kira didn't come to this village with Matty in the last book, believing she could still do good where she currently lived. 

Jonas is revealed cryptically (in otherwise, his name isn't explicitly said) in this book to have become Village "Leader". Matty is given the task of being the Messenger, the only person who can cross the forest between their village and Kira's unharmed. He's also found that he has another gift--the ability to heal living things by touching them. This depletes him in the process, an omen for the future. 

Someone called "Trademaster" has arrived in the village and exchanges gaming machines for a person's best qualities. Yes, you read that right, and my response to what I expect is your puzzled look is that I'm not at all sure why the author chose this weird angle for her story. The effect on the town is profound. People who had previously been kind and generous, always willing to help others, including outsiders, change radically because of the Trademaster's deception and nefarious agenda. They vote to close the village to outsiders. Leader and Seer plead to be allowed three weeks before the wall that keeps all others out is finished being built. Only Matty can go to Kira's village in time and bring her back before the way is shut. But the journey is dangerous, with the forest now sick and violent toward anyone who enters, I presume because of the Trademaster's evil. (Sigh, no explanation is given for how such a thing could be done or what powers beyond trickery the master of trade possesses to force such an unnatural situation.) 

While I liked Matty from Book 2 and he was interesting in this story as well, I can't say I thought this story was well-conceived--especially the villain and how he goes about seducing the townsfolk. The author writes this book and all the others in the series from such a limited point of view, and her characters are simply never curious or ambitious enough to find out the full details the story needs in order to bring a plot full circle, from adequate illumination of the conflict to satisfactory resolution. Who is the Trademaster and what does he really want? How does he pull off these exchanges that somehow make people who were good and kind into monsters? He showed up in the final two books in the series and he was never explained well enough to make sense to me, or to allow me to suspend belief about his abilities, utilizing slot machines to trick people into giving up the things that matter more in life than a few pieces of candy that come out of the games as prizes. What?! If readers had been allowed to find out more about the villain's powers, his motives, if plausible scenarios about how his evil worked were presented, maybe this story could have been genuinely moving. As such, I left it disappointed and very, very disconcerted about the cruel ending that didn't seem fair to me. 

This short book moves devastatingly into Book 4, Son, which brings the reader back into Jonas's village in Book 1, before he fled with the infant Gabe. In this story, the tale of Gabe's biological mother Claire is told. The baby's birth was traumatic, and Claire is reassigned to work at the Fish Hatchery instead of being allowed to go through it again. Eventually, she stops taking the pills that repress her emotions and curiosity. No longer passively accepting her fate and forgetting the child she'd birthed, Claire seeks to identify her son. 

Part one of this story, Before, is nearly over before it begins, ending, naturally, when Jonas flees the Community with Gabe. Claire eventually goes in search of him in Part two, Between. Unfortunately, the Trademaster, who was shortsightedly banished in the last book and free to continue doing harm to anyone he encountered, offers her a very bad trade in exchange for being taken to her son. 

In part three, Beyond, she ends up in the lower right of the map as an old woman, her youth stolen in order to gain what she's wanted most since her son was born. We learn that Jonas and Kira are now married with children (something that happened off-stage between Books 3 and 4 of the series). For his part, Gabriel longs to discover his mother, feeling like he was orphaned without explanation. I was bothered that Jonas didn't seem to have continued to take care of the infant once they arrived in this village. He and Jonas know each other, yes, but the relationship didn't strike me as close as it should have been. Gabe knows of the old woman who showed up out of nowhere in the lower village, but he isn't aware at first and then outright doesn't believe once he's told she's his mother. 

Part one of this story was compelling, seeing Jonas's world from a whole different perspective. As when The Giver ended so suddenly, being propelled into the next part of the book almost felt shocking because everything changed between the two parts, so it was almost like starting a brand new story with a character that might have been a different person for how vast the alterations were in Claire. The segue between parts two and three felt the same to me--drastic and abrupt. That Jonas wasn't willing to tell Gabe everything he knew (or at least hemmed and hawed about it for far too long to be more than contrivance), especially after Jonas and Claire met and the truth was revealed, felt a little too much like author convenience in my mind. When Gabe is finally convinced that Claire is actually his birth mother, he has no choice but to deal with the Trademaster once and for all. In order to do that, a magical power called veering is all but handed to him from the moment he realizes he needs it. I fully anticipated a bad ending to this story, but luckily the author didn't do what I fearfully expected. What follows is tragic, frustrating, and yet for the most part a fitting ending to the series. 

The last three books in this series follow the same pattern as Book 1 with innocent young adults being the ones to discover the horrors perpetrated for countless generations against their communities, usually by greedy leaders. These children are helpless to act against such a force, and therefore little or nothing presumably changes. Perhaps the author was hoping readers would accept a "Be the Change" attitude in these powerless heroes? Or maybe she just wanted to show that sometimes in life nothing gets better with time. People just keep making the same mistakes and/or are powerless to act against those who seek to control them. Only those in charge--the wealthy and powerful--hold the cards of change. If the latter is the case, then that lesson was slammed home mercilessly four tragic times in the course of this series. Next week, I'll conclude with a thorough exploration of the devastating themes in The Giver Quartet. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

How Not to Write a Series or {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Giver Quartet by Lois Lowry, Part 1 by Karen S. Wiesner

 

How Not to Write a Series

or {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review:

The Giver Quartet by Lois Lowry, Part 1

by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Note: Be aware that there are spoilers for all the books in the series in this review that will span the next three weeks in order to give adequate summaries for all four titles along with in-depth individual and series reviews.

The Giver Quartet, young adult fiction, by Lois Lowry features various places in a dystopian world that would seem to have no connection save for the map provided in the slipcase of the hardcovers and also available online. That statement is a little bit of an exaggeration but not by much, as we'll see over the next three weeks.  

Book 1, The Giver, was published in 1993. Books 2-4 were released between 2000 and 2012. I actually read the first book three times over the course of 15-some years before I realized it was actually part of a series. I was in a bookstore in March of this year and saw the boxed set there. Because I do vividly recall being disappointed and stunned with the ending each time I read it, wishing there could be more closure, I bought it and started reading immediately. I also watched the movie at some vague point long ago. 

The Giver is a very slow, strange story about a 12-year-old boy named Jonas who lives in an equally strange world that initially seems like a utopian society. The author never gives any sort of timeline for the series, beyond that it's set in a future period and universe. It simply exists and no past events can root it in actual reality. The focus of the first book in the series is a town referred to as only "The Community" (on the map above, it's the northernmost left area). Here, the people are isolated and cut off from the rest of the world. In this place, pain and difficulties have virtually been eliminated, favoring "Sameness". Here, they lack color, climate changes, differing terrain, freedom, individuality, and, though a semblance of equality is maintained, certain members of society are nevertheless clearly more favored than others. What this means in practice is that the members are ruled by a body of elders who make all the decisions--like inflicting color blindness on everyone (on the map, this town is rendered in black and white for that reason), assigning everyone roles that have very definite consequences in their life quality, drugging them so they can't feel emotions or sexual desire and don't question the way things are and have to be, essentially quashing any considerations of rebellion or merely learning something beyond what they're allowed. 

Further, babies are genetically engineered, artificially inseminated into very young Birthmothers who aren't allowed to nurture or even know anything about their own offspring. Only children who thrive and are deemed able to contribute to society continue to exist. If they don't and aren't, they're "released". No one in this society, not even the nurturers, questions this. They don't realize they're actually killing the babies. In the same way, the old are released when their time comes, and everyone believes this is some kind of blessing for everyone (kind of like in the early dystopian fiction story, 1967's novel Logan's Run and the possibly better known film of the same name, where everyone who reaches the age of 21 or 30, depending on whether you're reading the book or watching the movie, is forced to participate in a ritual called Carousel, in which a pleasure-inducing toxic gas kills them). 

Life is peaceful in the Community, if a little boring and confining, for those who do what's expected of them. They live their lives in family groups consisting of a husband and wife who don't have sex, brought together through the Elder council's own form of online dating--science and proper matching lead to those who apply for a spouse finding exactly the right person to complement them. Later, the couple can apply for children--one girl and one boy. The children attend school until they reach the age of 12, when they're assigned what will become their life's work. 

During the annual Ceremony of Twelve--something that smacked of being pulled right out of the Divergent Series by Veronica Roth, but of course that has to be the other way around since the first book in Divergent came out in 2011--Jonas is singled out to become the next Receiver of Memory. While highest honor and responsibility are given with this role, the separation Jonas feels is profound. His trainer is called The Giver, and he's very old, the only person in the Community to have access to books about the past and cultural memories. He alone has carried this burden, as the one before him did, and as Jonas will now be required to do. The Giver councils the Elders on the past in order to better the Community and avoid the mistakes made before. The Giver transfers these colorful memories that were passed down to him from the previous Giver to Jonas. If a Giver leaves or is missing from the Community, all the memories would pass back to the people, which would disrupt everything, all semblance of life as they know it. (How does it work? I'm not really sure. It's stated as simple fact and never questioned nor explained.) 

As I said, this is a very slow story and it's told in an extremely passive tone (something that can be said of all the books in the series), which actually makes a lot of sense--at least in Book 1--because this society is very repressed. Since they feel little, they don't realize so many things they're doing are wrong, even horrifying. Only after Jonas is given the memories does he realize all the Community is missing--color, passion, the need to learn and grow and share memories. Only through these things can they truly connect with each other. 

Jonas also realizes at that time that the baby Gabe his nurturer father has been bringing home in order to help him thrive is being evaluated by the Elders. In other words, if Gabe doesn't soon prove he's worthy to join and contribute to their society, he'll be released--killed. There's a horrible scene in the book where Jonas watches his father murder a newborn baby--injecting him with a drug that kills him, putting the lifeless body in a box, and sending him off like dirty laundry all while being happy and not having the slightest clue what release actually means. Beware, those who are particularly sensitive, because that's disturbing in the extreme. Do I think it should have been left out? By no means. This story required it. Sometimes in life, even alternate life in fiction, cruel realities need to be described in order for the impact to be truly felt. In this case, it was the catalyst for Jonas to take drastic action to save a life he deemed worthwhile. The author did this as tastefully as possible. Be assured there was nothing gratuitous about the scene. 

It's at the end of this story that Jonas finally becomes fully aware of what's happening in this sterile place. Almost before the story has really begun, Jonas flees into "Elsewhere" (the dense, dangerous woods beyond the Community) with infant Gabe in order to save his life. The ending is shocking and abrupt, to say the least, and many of Lowry's fans assumed--like I did--that Jonas and Gabe died at the end of The Giver. While Lowry stated she's "always kind of surprised and disappointed" by that reaction, she found her own ending optimistic (because Jonas and Gabe happen upon a house with warm lights burning inside, the strains of music playing). 

Just to give you closure, I will tell you that at no point in the series do readers learn what happens to the Community. The overall tone of subsequent books in the series implies (to me anyway) that they just went on as they were, without the cultural memory returned to each of them, never enlightened about what they'd done and were doing wrong. When Jonas fled, The Giver, who'd simply gone along with the Elder's agenda for so many years, still held most of the memories and therefore would have had to train yet another Receiver of Memory. And that horrifying world just kept on spinning without change or salvation, maybe indefinitely. 

In other words, Jonas had been given the opportunity to save the entire community alongside the old Giver, as the two of them had planned before Gabe was sentenced to be released. They'd intended for The Giver to finish transferring the cultural memory to Jonas, then Jonas would leave the community, which would cause the memories to return to every individual. Instead, Jonas bravely, kindly chose to save Gabe alone. True, Jonas was little more than a child himself trapped in the heartless machinations of an adult world without pity or remorse, as was the helpless infant about to be killed simply because he made too many waves, required too much of the community to be left alive any longer. What a tragedy. 

I'm aware that Lowry's intention was to explore human connection and the power of memories with this story, which is admirable and well done, but I can't help wishing the author had been able to provide Jonas, undoubtedly the hero of the story, with more…more options, more power, more help from the old Giver and maybe others, more of anything that would have allowed him to change a system that had taken away everything that made life worth living. Above all, that's the story I wish I'd been told here. Instead, readers are left with the haunting reality of innocence and insight stolen willfully by selfish elders from generations of blind people in this community; with the old Giver too broken and weakened by the knowledge he alone carries to do what has to be done to save them; and with two children--Jonas and Gabe--who escape and survive but essentially abandon their own society for all time to short-sighted leaders. I can't be the only one who finds it hard to read a story in which there is and can be no victory; worse, in which there is no hope. Readers are merely shown cold, hard facts about a wheel that will keep on turning perpetually because there's no one powerful and selfless enough to break the pattern. 

Next week, I'll continue this article with summaries of Books 2-4 of The Giver Quartet. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

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