The Hunger Games

I don't know when I realised I liked a good bit of dystopian fiction. Probably when I read Nineteen Eighty-Four as a teenager. When I was doing my A-Levels, I had to write a coursework essay on two novels. While everyone else chose the hand-holding option of The Remains of the Day and A Room with a View that the lecturer set out, I flat-out refused and opted for Brave New World and The Handmaid's Tale. I feel like I ought to read more in this genre, but I never seem to know where to start.

The Hunger Games trilogy almost crept up on me. When the third book, Mockingjay, was published, I remember seeing reviews here, there and everywhere and trying to ignore them because I was interested in reading them myself and wanted to avoid spoilers like whoa.

The concept behind the actual Games themselves is brilliantly simple, the combination of gladiators and reality television. As a consequence of an uprising over 75 years ago, every year each of the twelve (remaining) districts of Panem, formerly North America, send two teenage tributes to fight in the Hunger Games, a brutal televised fight to the death where the victor is the last one standing. When her younger sister Prim is chosen against all odds, Katniss Everdeen becomes the first ever volunteer from District 12. Her impassioned nature helps give fuel (or fire, I suppose) to a rebellion that spreads throughout the districts.

I devoured the first book, The Hunger Games, in a little under two days. Collins creates a world that I can get absolutely lost in and picture so clearly, from Effie Trinket's vivid hair and the candy-coloured landscape of the Capitol to the woodland desolation of the Games arena. In introducing us to this world, I think the first person narrative works perfectly well. Katniss is flawed and increasingly damaged throughout the course of the trilogy. She's not always likeable. None of the characters are. Indeed, one decision that Katniss makes towards the end of Mockingjay rankles me even today, weeks after I finished reading the book. But I can see why she made her choice and I would clearly much rather be left questioning what I would do in the circumstances than agreeing.

I had an anxious wait of several days after finishing The Hunger Games before my brand new copies of Girl On Fire and Mockingjay arrived. I don't know whether it was because I read them in quick succession or because of the plot, but I currently see them as halves of one story, as it were. Perhaps re-reads, and I'm sure there will be re-reads, will change that view. Both characters and the nation of Panem get twisted and developed, the first person narrative again working brilliantly with world views shifting and changing as Katniss learns more information. Finnick Odair's transformation from the cheesy playboy to the damaged victor that the President whored out to Capitol citizens made his character so much more interesting. The more you learnt about Haymitch, Katniss' reluctant and constantly drunk advisor, the more you care about him. I'll admit, in the first book I envisioned him to be in his fifties or sixties, but discovering that he's no older than 41 (if I've done my sums right) drags him kicking and screaming into the 'tragic' column, rather than the comedy figure that the Capitol paints him to be in the Hunger Games broadcasts each year.

These books managed to keep me awake at night, both mid-reading and after I'd finished. I don't remember any books ever doing that. I want to re-read them, but I think I need a little time and space before I do that (and hopefully get through some of the other books in my to-read) list.