BOOK: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (2008)


The Hunger Games is a dystopian novel which is set in Panem, or what used to be North America. The wealthy inhabitants live in the powerful and luxurious centre of the Capitol and everyone else is divided into twelve districts, which provide various necessities for the economy (mining, agriculture, luxury goods). To keep the districts from rebelling the Capitol has set up the ritual of the 'Hunger Games' where one boy and one girl from each district is chosen to enter a documented arena where they will fight to death until one person emerges victorious. Collins has said she came up with idea for the book when she was flicking between two television programmes: an American game-show showing boys and girls competing, and a war-zone showing young people fighting and dying. In her novel she highlights this modern disconnect between the frivolous power and luxury of the Western nations and the hardship and poverty of much of the rest of the world through the contrast between the vacuous image-obsessed people of the Capitol and the starving oppressed people of the districts. However, apart from a few comments that are obviously aimed at contemporary life, such as Katniss' disgust at how the people of the Capitol use surgery to make themselves younger and thinner, Collins stays pretty safe in the world of fantasy and there is not much biting social criticism. The main character, and the most interesting part in the book, is Katniss, a young girl who has struggled to keep her younger sister and slightly useless mother from starvation since the death of her father in a mining accident. Katniss may not be a kick-boxing superhero like Buffy, but she is intelligent, street-wise (or forest-wise) and good with a bow and arrow, and the book is as much a battle of wits as a battle of strength. I found the novel pretty addictive, reading it in one sitting: the narrative was well-paced and fairly well written, the main characters were believable and likeable, and the plot was exciting, gory and not too predictable. However, the whole thing seemed rushed to me: the characters in the periphery were not fleshed out; the motives and emotions of Katniss were not developed sufficiently; and the whole thing was a frantic rush from scene to scene, where in depth descriptions of food, rather than character, seemed to take priority. The snippets of back-story were a nice addition, but once again they were brief and slightly dissatisfying (although maybe these are worked on further in the later novels). There were two things that really annoyed me though: the love triangle and the wolf-mutts. The love-triangle in the novel just seemed out of place: unnecessary and unconvincing. I really hope this doesn't follow in Twilight's shoes and spend the next two books chronicling the mundane agonising of a teenage girl who has to chose between two boys who are desperately in love with her. Similarly the addition of 'werewolves' also seemed to be inserted to please lovers of Twilight rather than to enhance the narrative. Without giving too much away, the wolf 'mutts' come in during one of the final scenes, and I thought their presence was the only thing that was not sufficiently explained or rationalised, as such I found them a bizarre and dispensable add-on in an otherwise compelling and imaginative plot.