Mockingjay is the third and final book in the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. I can’t talk about this book without spoiling it for folks who aren’t finished with it yet, so please read on after the jump if you are finished. If not, come back later so we can talk about it.
This review might be a bit spoilery if you haven’t read the first book in this series because it’s difficult to talk about events in this book without revealing the end of the first.
Suzanne Collins’s second book in The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire, picks up the story of Katniss Everdeen after she and fellow District 12 resident have become popular winners of the 74th Hunger Games. Katniss and Peeta must tour the districts, where they are greeted with signs of unrest—and Katniss seems to have become an unwitting rallying point for rebels. President Snow, loathsome leader of Panem, blames these new problems on Katniss’s defiance of the Capitol at the Games when she threatened to kill herself rather than kill Peeta. For the 75th Hunger Games, the 3rd Quarter Quell, President Snow has something special in mind. The pool of competitors will be drawn from each district’s former winners. And Katniss is the only female winner from District 12. She will have to go back into the arena, and this time, she will be facing her most dangerous competitors: people who have managed through shrewdness and strength to win the Hunger Games in the past. How can she hope to survive her second turn in the arena? And if she can’t, how can she at least protect Peeta?
I had heard some readers say this book was not as good as the first, but I have to admit I didn’t see it. Others had complained that the first half was somewhat slow, but I managed to turn the pages as quickly as I had with The Hunger Games. It was intriguing to me to see how Katniss handled being a victor, seeing her life change. I also found the changes in her district interesting. Katniss is not the kind of girl to sit idly by and do nothing if anyone she cares about is being hurt. Because the real news about what is going on in Panem is kept from the districts, it’s only by accident—seeing a news program meant for District 12’s mayor and running into some escapees from District 8 in the woods while she is hunting—that Katniss realizes her act of defiance in the Hunger Games has turned her into a symbol for rebellion. On her district tour, she witnesses some of the unrest for herself. Seeing Katniss compete in the arena this time, with new threats devised by the Gamemakers, had me turning the pages well past 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. One of my students said in class on Friday that the end of this volume of the trilogy was “epic,” and I would agree. So much happens so fast at the end, and as we readers are following events from Katniss’s confused perspective, it’s difficult to figure out what is going on. I was also right about some speculation I had while reading The Hunger Games, but it’s a pretty spoilery if you haven’t read the first book or even the second.
I told my dad the other day that I had just read the new Harry Potter after I’d finished The Hunger Games. I really don’t think these books will reach that level of popularity, and maybe won’t reach even the level of the Twilight series, which is a shame because despite their darkness, I think they’re better. What I meant was I had found a new book that had me turning the pages in the exact same way as the Harry Potter series. Virtually everyone I know is reading these books or has just finished them.
Suzanne Collins is on a twelve-city book tour to promote Mockingjay, but she isn’t venturing into the South. Unfortunately, she has strained her hand and will not be signing books on her tour. I have wondered a couple of times as I read what Collins makes of the books’ popularity. I purchased my copy of Mockingjay at the Little Shop of Stories yesterday while we were at the Decatur Book Festival. Now I just have to resist reading it for a little while as I try to get to work on my portfolio for graduate school.
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Full disclosure: I borrowed this book from my friend Catherine.
I read Georgette Heyer’s Regency novel Charity Girl as part of Austenprose‘s month-long celebration of Georgette Heyer. It was the first Heyer novel I’ve read. My review of Charity Girl can be found here at Austenprose. I was honored to be asked to be a part of the celebration, and I was certainly game to try a new author that so many of my wonderful blog friends have enjoyed. Unfortunately, I don’t think Georgette Heyer is for me. I had a lot of difficulty understanding her Regency slang, which I understand is well-researched and authentic. Still, Jane Austen, who wrote during the actual Regency, managed to make her books timeless and easy for even modern readers to understand.
In addition, I really felt the plot was very thin and driven mainly by dialogue. It was easy to guess how the novel might end only a few pages in, and the characters were not very interesting to me. I’m not sure if I’d give Heyer another try or not. Romance isn’t really my thing, though I have read and enjoyed a few romance novels before.
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Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen lives in District 12 in the aftermath of some indeterminate disaster that has leveled North America, leaving the country of Panem to rise from the ashes. Katniss lives in District 12, an impoverished area dedicated to the production of coal. After her father died, Katniss became the head of the family and learned to hunt in order to keep starvation at bay, for the Capitol is still punishing the districts for a rebellion over 70 years prior to the book’s beginning, and one of their key weapons is starvation. Each year, the twelve remaining districts (District 13 has been destroyed) must provide a boy and girl between the ages of 12 and 18 as tributes to compete in the Hunger Games, yet another device the Capitol uses to keep the districts in line. The Hunger Games gather 24 tributes to fight to the death and for their survival in an arena for the entertainment of the Capitol residents. Tributes’ names are drawn from lots, and Katniss becomes an unwitting contender in the Games. She’ll have to decide if she has what it takes to do what is necessary to survive the Hunger Games and win.
I am fan of dystopian fiction. Some of my favorite books are dystopian novels. Does that mean I’m a horrible person who likes to watch others’ misery? Or is it because it’s often the kind of reading that really makes you think? I’d like to think it’s the latter, but reading The Hunger Games made me wonder. It’s the ultimate in reality shows—a fight to the death. We would like to think we would never watch something like that, but maybe we would. Think about the kinds of things we already do watch on reality shows. And this show bears a striking resemblance to shows currently on TV, minus the death perhaps. What author Suzanne Collins does rather convincingly is take a scenario that seems unrealistic and not only make you believe it, but also help you understand we’re not as far away from it as we’d like to think. The book is a real page-turner, and it will probably suck you in by the end of the first chapter. I picked it up because virtually everyone I know was abuzz about the third book in the trilogy, Mockingjay, which was just released this week. I decided I had to see what the fuss was about, and I totally get it. Collins’s spare style authentically captures Katniss’s voice while still managing to provide descriptive details that make the story alive and realistic. In fact, her writing style reminds me of my daughter Sarah’s. I have three children, one of whom is the exact age of Katniss, so it was difficult reading for me as a mom and as a teacher of teenagers in the age group who competed in the games, but if you think Lord of the Flies, it’s not so hard to understand. Why would the Capitol pick children? Because it hurts more. Because they can. Of course, the most disturbing thing about the Capitol residents, which you realize by the end of the book, is that they are us.
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FTC Disclosure: I borrowed this book from my friend Catherine.
We were having some trouble with our Internet connection this morning. Since it looked like it was going to be a long-standing issue, perhaps even stretching into the beginning of the week (quelle horreur!), I decided to try to finish A Farewell to Arms. I am teaching it for the first time starting next week, and I wanted to be ready. I have not read a lot of Hemingway’s novels. I have never read The Old Man and the Sea or For Whom the Bell Tolls, but I have read and loved The Sun Also Rises. I have read and loved many of his short stories.
If you haven’t read A Farewell to Arms, parts of this review are really spoilery. I had the end spoiled for me long ago, and it didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the book one whit, but if your mileage varies on that score, then consider yourself forewarned.
Katherine Howe, writer of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, has said that historically dogs have been considered witches’ familiars in greater numbers than cats, who have the association with witchcraft today. She gave her Connie a little dog named Arlo in her book. I wondered as I read about all the dogs on Yellow Dog Island, who seemed to be able to know what Towner wanted and would listen to her, especially in one crucial scene in the end. Did Barry intend to hearken back to the idea of dogs as familiars, or was it a coincidental choice? I myself would consider Towner, May, and Eva to be witches in a sense, though they don’t explicitly embrace that notion themselves in the same way that Ann Chase does.
One of the elements Joseph Campbell describes as an aspect of many hero’s journeys is the rebirth in the forest or the cave. For example, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry walks into the Forbidden Forest to face Voldemort, fully believing he will die. Instead, the Horcrux inside him is destroyed, and he is, in a sense, reborn. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck fakes his own death to escape from Pap. He emerges from the cave on the island a new person, so to speak. I saw a similar rebirth in The Lace Reader. Toward the end, when Towner is trying to rescue Angela from Cal’s followers, the two women travel through a secret doorway in Eva’s basement that leads to a tunnel. Because the tide is in, the water partially fills the tunnel, and the women will have to swim in order to escape because Cal’s followers have set fire to Eva’s house behind them. Towner takes Angela by the hair and instructs her to go limp so that she can help both of them swim to the end of the tunnel. They emerge in Eva’s boathouse at the other end. In a way, this seemed to me to be a feminization of the emergence from the cave in that the water surrounded the women. It actually made me think it might be a metaphor for the birth canal. After that moment, both women are in a sense reborn. I wondered if that metaphor had occurred to Barry, if she had been aiming for it. By the way, I subscribe to the belief that just because a writer didn’t intentionally mean to create a symbol or metaphor, it doesn’t mean it’s not there. Reading is a creative act, and we bring our thoughts and experiences to reading. If we see a symbol there, then as far as I’m concerned, it’s there. Tolkien is famous, for example, for hating allegory. Yet The Lord of the Rings, and especially The Silmarillion can be read as biblical allegory. I actually like Jasper Fforde’s explanation: he says a book only belongs to an author as long as no one else has read it. After that, it belongs to the reader, too, and the creative act of reading allows for readers to interpret books in ways that authors might not have considered. And they’re right, too.
The Lace Reader is more intriguing on a re-read because knowing the big reveal at the end enabled me to read the book with a different eye. I caught many more of Barry’s hints regarding what might be going on in Towner’s psyche than I did when I read it the first time. Unreliable narrators are difficult because I think as readers we are trained to trust the person telling the story, and some people don’t like this book because they feel betrayed by the narrator. However, Barry has not betrayed anyone. It would take a more astute reader than I to pick up on all the clues on a first read, but she does plant clues, and in the end, the big reveal makes sense given what the reader knows about Towner and how other characters react to her. Re-reading revealed much more starkly to me the ways in which Barry takes pains not to cheat the reader, but I think some of the negative comments I’ve seen about this book centered around not feeling prepared for that ending, and on a re-read, I didn’t think it is a fair criticism. I admit to being surprised by the ending the first time, but it isn’t completely out of the blue, and it makes sense in the story. And as I said in my last review, readers would do well to take Towner at her word in the first few sentences. She is telling the truth, there.
I think Barry is an interesting writer. She has a great knack for evoking a place, turning that place into a character in its own right. Her secondary characters like Eva, Ann Chase, who appears in both of her novels, and Melville, Finch, and Jessina in The Map of True Places are well-drawn and fun to read. In all, I think The Map of True Places is a stronger book, and I think those who didn’t enjoy The Lace Reader precisely for the reasons I discussed will like it better, but I thoroughly enjoyed both books. I thought this interview, in which Barry examines the novel herself with a critical eye, was illuminating.
Both times I have read this book, I’ve finished wanting know how to make lace. I am looking forward to whatever Brunonia Barry writes next. I find her writing inspiring in that I would like to be able to write about place and create such interesting characters in the same way that she does.
My rating is still the same.
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Full disclosure: I received this book originally as an advanced reader copy, and the second copy, the one I re-read, as part of a prize package from William Morrow and Destination Salem. I like the paperback cover better than the hardcover version.
Jonathan Swift’s novel Gulliver’s Travels is as excellent a satire today as when it was published in 1726. Lemuel Gulliver is a surgeon with the soul of an explorer. Gulliver’s Travels purports to be the tale of his voyages, including descriptions of the strange peoples and sites he encounters. Most readers are familiar with his iconic adventures in Lilliput, a land populated by beings six inches tall, where Gulliver towers over the inhabitants like a giant. Gulliver is initially mistrusted and even held captive in Lilliput until he enters into the service of the king. Over time, Gulliver learns that Lilliput is at war with neighboring country Blefuscu over which end of the egg it is most proper to break—the little or the big. When Gulliver refuses to help Lilliput fight her enemy Blefuscu, he is charged with treason. He manages to escape and is rescued by a ship and returns home.
It’s not long before he’s at sea again and winds up in the land of Brobdingnag, a land populated by giants. Gulliver now finds himself in a land where he is of Lilliputian size in comparison to the inhabitants. He is cared for by a Brobdingnagian girl and exhibited as a curiosity. This time, his leave-taking is accidental as an eagle snatches the traveling box in which he’s being carried and drops it into the sea, where he is once again rescued.
On his third voyage, Gulliver visits several more interesting countries, including Japan, which I found curious as it’s the only “real” country described in the novel. The flying island of Laputa, with its focus on mathematics and music, was really interesting to me, especially in light of their impracticality. It reminded me a little bit of Donald in Mathmagic Land. You remember seeing it in school?
The final voyage, which Gulliver undertakes after swearing off exploring for good, takes Gulliver to the land of the Houyhnhnms, who are horse-like creatures. Gulliver comes to admire the Houyhnhnms more than people. The people he encounters in the land are course, uncivilized Yahoos. In this final voyage, Gulliver learns to appreciate the Houyhnhnms over his own kind, which he afterward refers to as Yahoos.
I think Lemuel Gulliver is a huge jerk. He abandons his family. His wife was pregnant when he left on his last voyage. When he returns, he rejects his family and prefers to spend time with a pair of horses he has procured. He passes judgment on the people he encounters. I found the Houyhnhnms to be haughty and proud and certainly couldn’t understand Gulliver’s adoration of them. Perhaps it is Swift’s way of asking the reader to think about why they look up to anyone. As usual, Swift’s satire is razor-sharp. I admit some of the book surprised me. Gulliver talks quite a lot about his bodily functions, and I admit I didn’t expect that out of a book written during that time, but I suppose it makes sense given that this is not the prim Victorian period. The book had some enjoyable moments. I liked the parts set in Brobdingnag and Laputa the best. I’m glad I read the book despite finding its protagonist to be hard to sympathize with, but I think a book about Gulliver’s wife would have been interesting, too. I would have kicked his sorry tail out the door, and good riddance. I think one of the chief ironies of the book is that Gulliver criticizes so many of the societies, ultimately idolizing the Houyhnhnms (undeservedly, in my opinion) and despising his own race, without seeing that he is one of the least likable, least worthy, and most fallible of them all. Ultimately, I just like to read about protagonists I can care about more. I found myself hoping Gulliver would suffer harm. A good frying pan over his head and kick in the ass administered by his wife when he showed up after the Houyhnhnms kicked him out would have redeemed the book nicely for me.
I read this novel via DailyLit.
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After my recent visit to Salem, I enjoyed this book very much. The novel is set mostly in Salem. I pulled out my maps a few times to remind myself exactly where Barry’s locations were. I had visited some of them, including the House of the Seven Gables, across the street from the home where Finch and Zee live, Sixty2 on Wharf, Nathaniel’s, the Peabody-Essex Museum, and Ye Olde Pepper Companie candy store, just to name a few. Barry writes with a clear sense of place, and the city is almost another character in the story. She draws in characters from The Lace Reader toward the end—Ann Chase most prominently, but also Rafferty and mentions of Towner and May Whitney. Barry places Ann Chase’s witchcraft shop on Pickering Wharf, right about where Laurie Cabot’s shop is. I know I enjoyed this book more for having visited Salem such a short time before reading it, especially because this book focuses much more on the maritime history of Salem than the witchcraft history. When I visited I really felt a much stronger sense of Salem as an old trading port and imagined the ships returning from exotic places laden with spices two centuries ago.
The plot of the novel is intricately woven, and Barry doesn’t drop a thread. Every puzzler or detail she mentions is resolved by the end, but each had me wondering for most of the book. Why did Melville and Finch fight? What about that strange fortune teller’s story to Zee’s mother? It was obvious too that Barry had done her research about mental illness and her own experiences with her father’s Parkinson’s lend authenticity to Zee’s experiences with Finch.
I think the cover of the novel is gorgeous. I love the colors. The cover is a perfect evocation of the novel’s theme of finding yourself—the novel is really more about Zee trying to figure out who she is and right herself as her world is turned upside-down. I picked this book up late last night and read into the wee hours of the morning. When I woke again, I read straight through until I finished with a few breaks on the computer. I love being swept away by a book, and it was such a lovely visit back to Salem.
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Full disclosure: I won this book as part of a prize package from Destination Salem and William Morrow.
Denise Giardina’s novel Emily’s Ghost is the third novel about the lives of the Brontës that I’ve read this year. The other two were Jude Morgan’s Charlotte and Emily and Syrie James’s The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë. Perhaps because Wuthering Heights is my favorite novel, I felt Emily’s presence lacking a bit in these other two novels as they were both told from Charlotte’s point of view. Giardina’s novel is told mainly from Emily’s point of view, but also includes the perspectives of the curate William Weightman, supposed by many to have been a love interest of Anne Brontë’s. Giardina chooses instead to depict William Weightman as Emily’s beloved. As no substantiation exists for a definite relationship with Anne, I suppose Giardina can take the license to offer a different portrayal of Weightman’s affections than is traditionally shown.
Emily’s Ghost is not a sweeping saga of the Brontës so much as a collection of important vignettes. Giardina notes that the story we traditionally read of the Brontës has been Charlotte’s, as she was the sister who survived and her biographer, Elizabeth Gaskell, naturally had Charlotte’s point of view to work with. Emily’s story, at least as Giardina imagines it, is very different. I found her William Weightman charismatic and her depiction of their relationship plausible. Patrick Brontë is particularly well drawn in this novel, and Branwell is portrayed in a much more sympathetic light than usual, due mainly to his concern over Emily’s reaction to Weightman’s death and his care for Weightman as he died. Charlotte, on the other hand, suffers a great deal from Giardina’s characterization. She comes off as a little bit man-crazy, and certainly whiny, self-absorbed, and vain (about her talent, especially). In the final pages, she’s downright appalling.
I actually think of the three Brontë novels I’ve read, I enjoyed this one the most. I was swept away—it’s easy to tell Giardina is a fan of the Brontës. I also felt somehow that this novel captured something accurate, something very real about the Brontë household. Or perhaps a somewhat romanticized version of it. It’s much more like Wuthering Heights than Jane Eyre, which is to be expected. A couple of favorite lines stand out:
They were sisters. They loved one another. They were also rivals, though they never admitted to it.
I can easily picture the Brontës feeling this way—so much talent in so little space.
And Emily, remarking to her sisters, who do not like Wuthering Heights:
And do you despise Heathcliff? Then despise me! Because I—” She jabbed her finger against her chest as she leaned forward across the table. “I am Heathcliff! I am!”
Be sure to check out the much more comprehensive review at BrontëBlog. If you are a fan of the Brontës, you will enjoy this novel.
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Happy birthday, Emily Brontë.
Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility is the story of two sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood who, along with their younger sister Margaret, are children of their father’s second marriage. When their father dies, their older half-brother John and his wife Fanny decide not to provide for their younger sisters and step-mother, leaving them in much reduced circumstances. Fanny does everything in her power to make her husband’s family feel unwelcome, especially in light of Elinor’s attachment to Fanny Dashwood’s brother Edward Ferrars, which Fanny sees as an inappropriate match for her brother. The family removes to a cottage in Devonshire, where Marianne meets and falls in love with John Willoughby. The novel follows the romantic fortunes and misfortunes of Elinor and Marianne as they learn to strike a balance between sense and sensibility.
I first read this novel in 1998, during my first year as a high school teacher. It was refreshing to return to it again and discover I loved it as much as I remembered. I had completely forgotten Willoughby returns upon hearing of Marianne’s illness to confess he still loves Marianne to Elinor. I can’t remember if that scene was absent from both movies I’ve seen or just the most recent. I have always admired Elinor as the kind of person who puts others before herself and rolls up her sleeves to do what must be done. I wish I were more like her. To Marianne’s credit, she realizes her behavior is selfish and repents of it. Her essential romantic nature and love for music and books is what I admire about her.
I can’t tell if I like this book better than Pride and Prejudice or not. Elizabeth Bennet is a spunky, admirable character, and Mr. Darcy a worthy romantic hero. Yet, the Misses Dashwood certainly have their charms. I have thoroughly enjoyed my re-reads of both books this year.
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I re-read this novel for the Everything Austen Challenge. It is the second of six Austen-related activities I have planned. Others:
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