The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

When talking about books, there are some clichés used awfully often in order to suggest the idea that the novel is one of a great value, totally worth being read carefully until the end. “You won’t be able to put it down”, “it gets you from the very first beginning”, “one of the best books I’ve laid my hand on”, “you enjoy every single word”, “cancel your plans for the day before opening it”, so on, so forth. Well, as much as I tried to avoid this kind of expressions so far, I found a series that I can only speak well of: “The Hunger Games”, by Suzanne Collins. Three books that you truly can’t put down or take off your mind from.

“The Hunger Games” presents a story from a future universe, from Panem, the country that took over the old continent that used to be North America. The Capitol has installed its dictatorship step by step all over the twelve districts of Panem, and in order to maintain under control all the population and to remind people about the infinite power of the system, every year it organizes the national competition of “The Hunger Games”. At these games, every year have to participate two teenagers from each district.  After the tossing, they are all thrown into a huge arena, built to look like a natural place, where they are forced to fight against each other. They are being filmed non stop, and the Games are broadcasted live all over the twelve districts. The Games’ rules mention the fact that the edition only ends by the time only one player is left alive. Therefore, every player has to kill at least one opponent in order to be alive at the end. If the competitors’ deaths come too infrequent, the Capitol throws over the arena other deadly traps: mutants, poisoned objects, acid rains, wild animals, so on.

Even though all the districts are awfully poor, and the winner of the Hunger Games gets to receive, as a prize, a house and lifetime food supplies, the districts consider the tossing up day a dark one, because at least one of the two teens will find his death in the arena.

Katniss Everdeen is the series’ heroine. She was born in District 12 and she became the head of the family soon after her passes away, taking care of her little sister and her mother who was strongly affected by her husband’s death. They confront poverty too, so she has to hunt in order to provide food for the family. When her sister is chosen to participate at the Hunger Games, Katniss volunteers to take her place. Along with her goes Peeta, the baker’s son, who had helped her many times by secretly giving her food. Once the Games begin, Katniss uses her hunting abilities to hide, feed and even to kill when she is forced to. At some point, she finds herself trapped between the necessity of surviving for her family’s sake and the impossibility of killing Peeta, who’s been highly protective even in the arena. These kinds of tough decisions confront her a lot during the Hunger Games, the Peace Jubilee and the war (the major events from the “Catching Fire” and “Mockingjay” books), forcing her to choose between different feelings and close people.

The end of each novel, along with the end of the series, is highly predictable even from the first few pages. Even so, the lecturing isn’t affected in any way, because all the small details that help building the end are absolutely unpredictable.

“The Hunger Games” series is, basically, for children, but is mostly read by adults. Personally, I doubt that a child cam truly appreciate the novel. And I’m not talking about appreciating the style or about the way the events are shown or about the way the descriptions are made, but about all the crimes detailed in the book, about all the contradictory feelings, about all the simple, yet too complicated action.

Therefore, yes, I have to agree, the most suited description of this book is “you won’t be able to put it down”. It’s the kind of book you feel sorry it’s over, although you have been anxiously waiting for it to end. And all the words that come beside “you won’t be able to put it down” are totally useless.