Book Review- The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, the sequel

The Hunger Games is set in futuristic North America in a country called Panem.  Life in North America is over as we know it.  Panem has a center of operations called The Capitol and twelve outlying districts that are titled merely by number.  Each year the Capitol requires two tributes, or sacrifices, from each district to participate in the Hunger Games.  Every name of every boy and girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen are put into a lottery, and a boy and girl from each District are chosen at random to participate in the annual televised fight to the death that required viewing for all citizens.

The story is told from the perspective of Katniss, a sixteen year old girl living with her mother and twelve-year-old sister in District 12.  Her father was killed in a coal mining accident several years ago, and Katniss is now the sole provider for her family.  She feeds her family by hunting illegally in the woods beyond the wire fence that keeps residents from escaping from the District.  When her sister’s name is drawn in the lottery, Katniss immediately volunteers to take her place.

I first heard about this book from a friend who clipped a review by Lev Grossman about The Hunger Games and the sequel book, Catching Fire, from Time Magazine’s September 7, 2009 issue.  The idea that struck me most in that review was the last three lines: “Kids are physical creatures, and they’re not stupid. They know all about violence and power and raw emotions. What’s really scary is when adults pretend that such things don’t exist.”

In this incredible novel, violence and power are central in the lives of all citizens.  The Capitol holds all the power and the citizens of each District live within the prisons of their cities.  People are left to starve to death or are routinely killed for such actions as killing a deer for food or trying to run away.  Medicine is scarce and even the baker’s family eats the stale food that doesn’t sell.  Children in District 12 live in fear of losing a parent in the coal mines, because without a provider they are doomed to starvation.

When Katniss volunteers to take her sister’s place in the Hunger Games, she is joined by Peeta, a boy who she barely knows.  Within a few days of the lottery drawing, Peeta declares to the world that he has always loved Katniss, and suddenly the fight to survive the Killing Arena becomes a game of cunning, violence, love, power, and skill.

Suzanne Collins takes us into a world where things are exactly as they seem; corrupt, unfair, destitute and violent.  Nothing is sugar-coated and at least everyone knows where they stand.  Through Katniss, the reader discovers that there is a piece of personal power that can be wielded in a world that seems bent on the destruction of dignity, friendship, compassion, justice, and love.

I wasn’t sure if this story would be difficult to stomach and hesitated to begin reading once I bought it from the bookstore.  After several weeks of psyching myself up, I quickly discovered that I couldn’t put this book down, and read it even during meal times.  The on-screen romance that Peeta and Katniss purport is strangely non-erotic and entirely believable.  They realized that romance was what the viewers in the Capitol wanted, and they conspired to deliver, realizing that their performance bought them good-will and gifts from sponsors.

I hesitate to categorize this book.  Is it Adventure?  Romance?  Suspense?  Young-Adult?  Truthfully, it is all those things, which is what makes this such a good read.  Young adults will love this, but adults will enjoy this as much as they enjoyed the Harry Potter and Twilight series.  Suzanne Collins joins the ranks of J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer in understanding what kids innately know; the world is a scary, violent place, and no amount of reassurance from parents will change that fact.  She dives head-long into this post-Apocalyptic world, and invites the reader to experience the raw human emotions of greed, violence, power and will to survive.  The world is just as it seems; bent on destruction.  The question is; who will be the winner?