London Book Club: September

Posted on September 27, 2011 in Uncategorized

For September’s SYP London book club we read post-apocalyptic YA novel The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. The story centres around Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mallark, two 16-year-olds chosen from their District to compete in the tyrannical Capitol’s Hunger Games, in which 24 children from the Districts fight to the death on live TV. Although a fair few Twilight fans (closet or otherwise) can be found among our attendees, the book club itself rarely makes a foray into children’s fiction, so we wanted to make sure it was a good one. As it turned out, we weren’t disappointed.

A superior fantasy novel
The general consensus across the group was that we had found a book (and a series, for those of us who had read on) that outdid Twilight and all its homogenous progeny in almost every respect. The main characters were more believable as people, and there was a real sense that the author had laid bare the fundamentals of human nature. Most significantly, we were impressed by Katniss’s refusal to be defined by anyone else, particularly men.

However, that’s not to say that we didn’t have a few bones to pick. For instance, some of us were disappointed when Katniss was temporarily drawn in by some of the glitz of the Capitol, but most agreed that the character wouldn’t have seemed genuine had she been impervious to the influences of the media. Similarly, some felt that Peeta’s depth of feeling for Katniss was unrealistic given that he’d barely spoken to her prior to the Hunger Games, but when we put it in the context of a life lived in the extreme poverty and monotony of District 12, it didn’t seem as far-fetched.

Movie mania to come
One thing that struck some of us as we read was how perfect the book seemed for the big screen. Indeed, the narrative is so action-packed that it must be a screenwriter’s dream. However, on talking it over as a group we realised that its violent and distressing content could be a major issue for the upcoming first film’s age certificate. To reach its biggest potential audience (and therefore its greatest profits) it will need a PG-13 rating in the US and a 12A in the UK. We felt that it is unlikely to secure this if, for example, it retains the portrayal of the tragic death by spear through the stomach of one very young character to whom Katniss grows close.

Child friendly fiction?
Given this, we began to question whether this book was actually suitable for children, especially when one of us pointed out that most booksellers and publishers seem to draw the lower boundary to YA at 12 years of age (fortunately for us there’s no upper boundary!). At first I was shocked that a 12-year-old would be exposed to such graphic descriptions of violence. But others in the group, some of whom had studied children’s literature at university, were far less fazed by it. On reflection, I think I did greatly underestimate the resilience and perhaps the intelligence of 12-year-old readers. I myself read the His Dark Materials trilogy – which describes extreme violence and hardship, including children having their souls literally sliced away from them – between the ages of 11 and 13, and learnt so much about the world from it, barely flinching along the way. If anything, today’s young teens will be even harder to shock.

The merits of series
One last niggle for those of us who hadn’t yet carried on to the next part in the trilogy was the lack of resolution at the end of the first book. No doubt this is a sales technique intended to push readers into buying the next one, and we entered into some debate over the ethics of marketing series to children. We were mostly agreed in the end that a series is good for everyone – the publishers make their profits, teachers and parents see their children engaged in more reading, and children get to embark on longer adventures. And although those who had finished the trilogy felt that there was too much ‘filler’ in places, it certainly wasn’t a case of each book being almost a carbon copy of the previous one, a crime many children’s and YA series could be found guilty of.

Overall, we were very impressed with The Hunger Games and the range of positive role models and cautionary characters it provides for its readers. While we had our criticisms, we admitted that a cynical bunch of twenty-something publishers was hardly the book’s natural audience! Nonetheless, its themes of media domination and a survival-of-the-fittest society will resound with readers young and old.