Re-reading: The Giver

THIS ONE IS REALLY MESSING WITH MY HEAD YOU GUYS.

The Giver was one of those books that was assigned to me in class, but that I really ended up liking. Loving, actually. It was my introduction to dystopia, and I’ve been hooked ever since.

I first read this book in eighth grade, and I clearly remember not only having to write a paper on it, but also having to choose from a list of projects that would help us analyze the book. I chose to make a mix tape--on my boom box, natch--and I know for sure that Fiona Apple’s “The Child is Gone” was on there, but I can’t remember what else. (Shout out to Mrs. Van Doren who was doing multi-modal before multi-modal was A Thing!)  Basically this paragraph is just here to show you how cool of a kid I was (Eighth grade? Fiona Apple? Come on.) even though no one in middle school seemed to catch on. I was way ahead of my time.

So now that we’ve established that Eighth Grade Mallory was awesome, let’s talk about how Eighth Grade Mallory had her mind blown. Upon finishing the book, I thought “Oh, what a happy ending. He found a sled. He’s going to Christmas dinner. This is nice.” Then I went to class and the aforementioned Mrs. Van Doren got all critical think-y on us and was like, “Do you really think that he found a sled? Don’t you think that’s just a little too perfect?” And then I realized: Oh God, he died. He died and the baby died and this is not happy this is horrible and I need Fiona Apple now.

So this is what I’ve thought since eighth grade. And when I re-read the book, I thought it again. Yes, the ending is too perfect. There’s no way a sled is just waiting at the top of a hill. Some kid wants to go sledding, brings a sled to the top of a hill and then his mom calls him for dinner and he’s like “Ok, guess I’ll leave the sled here instead of going for one last ride,” and then trudges back down the hill? NOPE.

But then I started doing some research on Amazon, and I found this in the description of the sequel to The Giver: “Under the gentle guidance of Leader, who arrived in Village on a red sled as a young boy and who has the power of Seeing Beyond…” Wait, what? So he did live. And now he’s helping disabled children? I feel like my entire life has been a lie! Well, not really, but I do think this is a good example of when not to do a trilogy, which The Giver eventually turned into.

There were a few other things that surprised me about the book. I hadn’t realized it was so short. I wanted to know more about everything, and I especially wanted the relationship between the Giver and Jonas to be fleshed out a bit more, but with YA books that skew younger--The Giver may even be classified as middle grade now--those are the kinds of things that we, as adults, miss.

I still think it’s a wonderful book, and a great introduction to the genre of dystopian literature, but I also wish that there was no trilogy, because even if the ending was not entirely clear, open-ended is better than cheesy, and an actual sled waiting at the top of an actual mountain to take Jonas and Gabriel to an actual Christmas dinner—well, that’s just a little too easy for me. 

Grade I would have given this book as a kid: Tidal

Re-reading Grade: Extraordinary Machine

Status: Sometimes I choose to ignore things that ruin my perception of art (see: unnecessary sequels and When the Pawn…)

Re-reading: The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle

I’ve heard many friends talk about the books that define them—books that, for some reason, stuck with us more than most. For me, many of these books come from my youth, and in this recurring feature, I want to go back and read these books from an adult perspective, and assess how my attitudes toward the books have changed. In the best scenarios, I’ll discover more to love about the books than I remembered; in the worst, I’ll find that some books I hold so dear and loved so much maybe aren't that good after all. (I really hope that doesn’t happen too often.) Let me know if you have any suggestions for books to re-read!

I was walking up Broadway on an unseasonably warm Saturday in March, trying to delay the end of my lunch hour by perusing the used book tables on the sidewalk. (Sidenote: The existence of these tables is, and will remain, my absolute favorite thing about Manhattan.) After two tables and no luck, I started to head back to work, almost altogether skipping the last table. But something stopped me in my tracks. It was a cover—well, half of a cover, actually—with a young girl in a poufy blue dress with some seriously 80’s-influenced bangs. It was Charlotte Doyle: sailor, childhood hero, and ultimate bad ass.

I bought the book for $4, and didn’t even try to haggle.

I can’t be sure, but I think this book made me a feminist. Or a tomboy. Or, most likely, a feminist tomboy. It is action-packed, with sailing, betrayal, murder, and a clearly psychotic captain, all rolled into 226 pages. As a kid I loved the adventure, but the book is much more than that. It teaches young women to speak their minds and stand up for themselves, it portrays a strong, intelligent female character who throws away the frivolity of her upper class society life for something that makes her feel important, and it has a dash of racial issues to boot.

And then there is this passage. Before rereading, I remembered almost nothing about this book except for this one image of Charlotte, climbing rigging on a ship during a storm:

Though I was in fact climbing into the air, I felt as though I were swimming against a rising river tide. But more than rain or waves it was the screaming wind that tore at me. I could hardly make out where I was going. To make matters worse my wet and heavy hair, like a horse’s tail, kept whipping across my face. I might have been blindfolded. 

Desperate, I wrapped my legs and one arm about the ropes. With my one free arm I pulled my hair around, grasped it with the hand entwined in the ropes, and pulled it taut. I took the knife and hacked. With a shake of my head my thirteen year’s growth of hair fell away.

I still remember how I felt reading that--almost feeling the knife catching on tough strands of hair, and the lightness of it when it falls. I wanted to do something, anything, that would feel like that. I wanted to wrap my toes around wet rope and slice through sails. I wanted to travel. Really, I wanted to be Charlotte.

Seriously, is there a female character badder ass than this? (No, really, tell me. I want to read about her.)

Grade I would have given this book as a kid: A-

Re-reading grade: A+

Status: My childhood dreams remain in tact.