The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


My girlfriend makes an excellent canary in a coal mine. Two years ago, there was buzz for this book before it even came out. A friend read a publisher copy and kept talking about it in the internet equivalent of a quavering voice, and I thought hmm. But, well, trilogies published on an annual schedule, amiright?



So I got this book for my girlfriend and observed her reactions, partly to see if it was really that good, but mostly to accurately gauge how hard she would jones for the next book. Needless to say, I waited until the whole set was published. Thanks, Dumpling!



This book. You know, here’s the thing: this is a book about a bunch of kids forced to murder each other by a totalitarian state, and it’s – hmm, okay. There’s a strand of this book about performativity. Our heroine spends a fair amount of time thinking about the audience, playing to the cameras, constructing the story that will pull emotional strings just so. It’s an obvious story, but oh so very effective. This book is like that. It’s about a bunch of kids forced to murder each other by a totalitarian state, and it basically says to us, the secondary audience, here are the ways I’m going to come at you. Here, do you see me coming, here I am. A loaf of bread made me tear up, is what I’m saying.



And it works. The simple stories, you know, sometimes they’re obvious because they don’t have to be anything else. They’re the big boys, and they don’t need any fancy footwork to kick the shit out of you.





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