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A review by mynameismarines
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
5.0
We'll be talking about this entire series and its adaptations in an upcoming episode of Snark Squad Pod. Stay tuned!
I don't quite remember when I read this for the first time, only that it was a some point before the first movie came out. I've only read it once, (and attempted to reread it once before, but didn't get far) but this story in general is one that (thanks largely to the movie adaptations) has infiltrated pop-culture and has a large presence in my feelings. I've talked about this book highly, and so coming back to it some 8-10 years later, older, wiser, a different media consumer, and currently stuck inside in the middle of a pandemic was wild.
What I'm saying is that this hits different in 2020. And it still slaps.
It's hard for sure to separate all of the larger ways this story already lives in my feelings, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I found this to really hold up. The most I can say against it is that in general, the language is simple, though I think that's part of what makes it accessible. I can imagine that others might also take issue with the simplicity of the concept
This read, I was struck by these things:
- For a book called The Hunger Games, I'm positive I did not track the presence of food the way I did during this read. It's pervasive. Collins builds her world around food, the getting of it, the presence of it, the waste of it. She constantly draws parallels between the ways the government more overtly kills its people (the actual games) and the way it consistently kills its people (hunger). It's effective and, again, accessible and just wonderfully done.
- It's pandemic brain, I know, and the fact that certain of our political leaders have as good as said they would sacrifice grandma to the stock market at this point, but I kept tracking all the ways Collins kept checking in with us to give her games believability. The tesserae, for instance, were a detail I had forgotten that was just a gut punch. Of course this is a system that disfavors the poor. All of the pre-game details stood out to me as well. The interviews, the parade, the training-- they were the bits that most currently favor our own ideas of reality TV and grounded the wildness of the actual Games.
- This is a story about the collective grief of a struggling society, about the ways that a government can keep people apart and inherently against each other, and certainly about PTSD. It was gutting to see the different depictions of PTSD, in Katniss, in her mom and in Haymitch.
- Katniss is fascinating. She just cannot process, from even before the games, that people care for her. She cannot imagine bright futures, whether that's running away with Gale or having children or not living in District 12, or winning the games. She cannot process that the people in 12 like HER, that Madge is her friend, that she is impressive and able. She's frustrating sometimes, but also cares for hers so deeply, is so capable, and so easy to understand that you forgive her and obviously you cheer her on, even when that means that Collins has trapped us into cheering on the murdering of children.
There were so many other things, so many moments I loved, so many emotional beats. It's well-paced, engaging, emotional, and truly just a wonderful book.
[March 31, 2023] Marked for reread
I don't quite remember when I read this for the first time, only that it was a some point before the first movie came out. I've only read it once, (and attempted to reread it once before, but didn't get far) but this story in general is one that (thanks largely to the movie adaptations) has infiltrated pop-culture and has a large presence in my feelings. I've talked about this book highly, and so coming back to it some 8-10 years later, older, wiser, a different media consumer, and currently stuck inside in the middle of a pandemic was wild.
What I'm saying is that this hits different in 2020. And it still slaps.
It's hard for sure to separate all of the larger ways this story already lives in my feelings, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I found this to really hold up. The most I can say against it is that in general, the language is simple, though I think that's part of what makes it accessible. I can imagine that others might also take issue with the simplicity of the concept
This read, I was struck by these things:
- For a book called The Hunger Games, I'm positive I did not track the presence of food the way I did during this read. It's pervasive. Collins builds her world around food, the getting of it, the presence of it, the waste of it. She constantly draws parallels between the ways the government more overtly kills its people (the actual games) and the way it consistently kills its people (hunger). It's effective and, again, accessible and just wonderfully done.
- It's pandemic brain, I know, and the fact that certain of our political leaders have as good as said they would sacrifice grandma to the stock market at this point, but I kept tracking all the ways Collins kept checking in with us to give her games believability. The tesserae, for instance, were a detail I had forgotten that was just a gut punch. Of course this is a system that disfavors the poor. All of the pre-game details stood out to me as well. The interviews, the parade, the training-- they were the bits that most currently favor our own ideas of reality TV and grounded the wildness of the actual Games.
- This is a story about the collective grief of a struggling society, about the ways that a government can keep people apart and inherently against each other, and certainly about PTSD. It was gutting to see the different depictions of PTSD, in Katniss, in her mom and in Haymitch.
- Katniss is fascinating. She just cannot process, from even before the games, that people care for her. She cannot imagine bright futures, whether that's running away with Gale or having children or not living in District 12, or winning the games. She cannot process that the people in 12 like HER, that Madge is her friend, that she is impressive and able. She's frustrating sometimes, but also cares for hers so deeply, is so capable, and so easy to understand that you forgive her and obviously you cheer her on, even when that means that Collins has trapped us into cheering on the murdering of children.
There were so many other things, so many moments I loved, so many emotional beats. It's well-paced, engaging, emotional, and truly just a wonderful book.
[March 31, 2023] Marked for reread