Book Review: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

When I introduced my daughter to the dystopian perils of Katniss Everdeen a couple years ago, I was warned. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, was tough stuff and filled with terrible situations and violence that may be too much for young readers like her.

I have since spent my days hearing all about how fantastic and smart Katniss is, how my daughter likes anything to do with archery, and why I’m a terrible father for not yet pre-approving her attendance at the midnight debut of The Hunger Games movie this March.

I may have to relent.

On a whim, and only slightly pressured by the women in my house to read it before the movie arrives, I picked up Collins’ young adult sensation.

The book is the sometimes delicate, sometimes cold, and always cautious narration of Katniss Everdeen, a teenager living in the vague dystopian future of Appalachia. She survives for two reasons. She can hunt and scrounge in the forests (illegally, that is), and she lets almost no one close to her. And, she does it all for Prim, her precious and much less rugged  younger sister.

Their Appalachia is District 12, the coal mining center of a centrally controlled totalitarian state referred to simply as the Capitol. The book reveals little about this awful dystopian state, as Collins prefers instead to let the perspectives of a shell-shocked young Katniss and her small community reveal the effects of oppression. The choice is odd, given the tradition of dystopian science fiction as political commentary. Collins has much to say here, though, particularly about young women, their obsessions with appearances, and also about how popular media –  especially reality television — shapes our minds. Collins made exactly the right choices, I think, in presenting a largely faceless oppression. Yes, yes, of course the bad government is bad. But that’s not the point she’s after, and it makes The Hunger Games a sharper, more widely appealing book to young readers. Dare I suggest, a classic?

The Hunger Games are, of course, the centerpiece of it all. They are annual tribute by the 12 districts, and an obscene reminder by the Capitol of who’s in charge. Echoing the myth of Theseus and the minotaur, each district holds a lottery to send off one unlucky boy and girl to compete in these gladiatorial games, televised for all to watch. Katniss volunteers for the almost certain death in an effort to save her sister; it’s the first of many bold, heroic moves she makes.

They are nothing if not spectacle, these games. Katniss and her District 12 partner, Peeta, begin a feigned romance for the Capitol audiences, but it gives way to terror as the games begin, and Collins unveils her violent vision. She tortures all participants with gruesome injury and heartbreaking deaths. The death of one particular girl, whom Katniss befriends, is Collins wake-up call that this profoundly sad moment is no mere young adult page-turner.

Katniss excels in the game not really because she’s a bow hunter and survivor, but because she understands, even obsesses about how she appears. At every critical move, she considers and reconsiders not only what her young opponents must be thinking and planning, but what the watchers in the Capitol and her own sponsor must be thinking.

When the game announcer’s disembodied voice explains that the game rules have changed, she teams up with lovestruck Peeta, and quickly realizes that to survive and win, they must appear to be two lovers fighting to survive together. She knows the audience is wild for it, and Katniss learns to use this as a weapon of survival, and even as a weapon of political defiance. And survive she does at the cost of terrible injury and pretensions she can’t unravel.

Collins published her work as a trilogy, one of the hottest fiction series in many years. The hype has some merit. On its own terms, this first novel is a well done piece of fiction with a solid, if hard-edged, heroine that I’m proud to have my daughter admire. She can’t wait for me to read Catching Fire and Mockingjay.

For now, I’ll wait at least a little while to savor one of the finest young adult fiction books I’ve ever read.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins: A+

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