Messenger brings back a character from Gathering Blue, Matty, who has left the community he lived in with Kira to live in a place called The Village, a sort of refuge for those who have chosen, or been forced, to leave their communities for various reasons. Kira soon learns that things in her community are not what they seem, and soon she also has to choose what kind of life she wants. Gathering Blue tells the story of Kira, an orphan with a talent for weaving, who’s soon chosen by her community to work on the ceremonial robes that their Singer wears when, each year during a special ceremony, he sings the entire history of the community and what life used to be like. As he learns more about what life used to be like before everything was the same all the time, he’s soon forced to make a choice between continuing the dull, safe life he’s been born into, or something more real.
He gets these memories from a man who’s known only as the Giver. Jonas is chosen at age 12 for a big job–to be the keeper of his community’s memories from the time before, when people lived differently. Last year, it showed up as a suggestion for me on Amazon, and I learned that since 1993 Lois Lowry had written three more books in the same universe–on a whim, I bought the whole set, but it took me almost another year to get around to reading them.īrief summary of all four books: The Giver is the story of Jonas, who lives in a society where they have removed everything unpleasant–there’s no pain, no sorrow, no anger, but conversely there’s also no real joy or love. At some point, having moved on to more sophisticated dystopias as I got older, it ended up in the giveaway box and I haven’t read it or thought about it in years.
Everyone in my class had their own copy so we could follow along, and within a few years my copy was completely dog-eared and tattered, as I read and reread. It was my first exposure to dystopian fiction and I ate it up. I was 11 when The Giver was published, and I remember my 7th grade English teacher, the next year, reading it aloud to my class.
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