The Giver

The Giver by Louis Lowery

This book had been talked up to me by many, many people, and while I loved the lessons it taught, I wasn't as impressed with the book as I thought I would be.

Set in a utopian society, the people are kept from having any painful memories or knowing anything of the past. They don't know war, they don't know murder and death. In fact, you find out through the training of our main character that the other members of the utopia don't even know what colors are, they see in blacks and whites and tones of gray, but the idea of color is foreign to them.

The idea is that people must know about these past events in order to learn from them. And while the Receiver of Memory in the book is meant to hold all of these memories in order to keep the rest of the community from knowing pain and in order to keep peace, it tears this poor man apart to have all of these painful memories to bear as his own burden.

Overall a good read, and certainly some lessons to be learned. While I didn't find it as good as I expected it to be, I would still recommend it. It's a short book and a quick read and memorable. There are two sequels, and I have been told that the pieces I felt were missing from this book are incorporated in the the other two books of the trilogy.