Book Review: Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins

Read: September 2009

Catching Fire in one tweet-sized chunk:

Catching Fire does exactly that, igniting eyes-glued-to-the-page compulsion like few other books can. But then it goes off the boil.

“If it were up to me, I would try to forget the Hunger Games entirely. Never speak of them. Pretend they were nothing but a bad dream. But the Victory Tour makes that impossible. Strategically placed almost midway between the annual Games, it is the Capitol's way of keeping the horror fresh and immediate. Not only are we in the districts forced to remember the iron grip of the Capitol's power each year, we are forced to celebrate it. And this year, I am one of the stars of the show. I will have to travel from district to district to stand before the cheering crowds who secretly loathe me, to look down into the faces of the families whose children I have killed...”

Months have passed since Katniss and Peeta cheated the odds and scored a surprise and subversive victory in the 74^th Hunger Games. Now, faced with the obligatory Victory Tour and the need to once more impersonate a perfect couple, Katniss longs for the obscurity and freedom of her previous life. Though it is no longer a financial necessity, she continues to hunt outside the electrified fence and frequent the dodgy Hob. She regularly visits her old home, and the family of an old friend. It may not be perfect, but at least it is her life. For now.

One night, however, Katniss returns home to a surprise visit from the sinister President Snow who reveals that her little act of rebellion, her little victory over the Gamemakers, has had wider implications than she could have predicted. The situation is simple: the Victory Tour goes smoothly or she will be in trouble. For everyone knows that acts of rebellion, even ones solely designed to stay alive, rarely escape punishment in Panem. The effect of challenging an omnipotent state and winning, in any context, is to question the very existence of that power.

Catching Fire quickly proves an appropriate title as Katniss and Peeta struggle valiantly to save their lives and quench the flames that their actions have ignited. What they see on tour shows just how far things have progressed. There are rumours of a secret district, messages passed around in baked loaves of bread, simple acts of defiance. Katniss's Mockingjay pin increasingly comes to inspire and encapsulate the rising unease. And all the while President Snow waits in the background, smelling of blood and roses, embodying the omnipresence of the state, the ability to destroy with just a nod. Now seventeen, and in the middle of an awkward love triangle she has no interest in being part of, Katniss is propelled into a world of adult games for adult stakes. The violence may be less physical and imminent than it was in the arena, but it is no less deadly. And with the 75^th anniversary Quarter Quell looming and outright rebellion starting to spread, it appears that it wont be long before the authorities put out the fire once and for all...

The Hunger Games focused to such an extent on the eponymous games that we gained only a tantalising glimpse of the powerful forces that gave rise to it. Catching Fire is a far more intriguing book because the gaps start to be filled in. I've always been a fan of the middle book in a trilogy, or the penultimate one of longer series. They are generally the chance for an author to set the scene for what is to come, to focus on character and setting rather than plot. The slower pace allows for more detailed investigation into the background of a situation; the knowledge that there is already a committed readership eager to know more provides a certain leeway for an author to indulgence their imagination and flesh out their world.

And for the first 300-odd pages that is exactly what we get here. We travel with Katniss and Peeta as they travel to various districts of Panem on their Victory Tour, meeting people and seeing places that begin to round out the wider setting. All the while we are aware that events are progressing inexorably towards whatever the Capitol has in store for them, but that is in the future. It is enjoyable simply to stare out of the window and begin to understand. Questions are answered and more are posed. It is fascinating, enthralling, compelling reading. There are scenes back in the Capitol which are cinematic in scope and visual magnificence.

Everything is hotting up nicely.

But then it goes rapidly off the boil. Catching Fire turns out to be a deeply flawed and unbalanced book. It is as though, having spent so long providing background and detail to the world, Collins, loses her nerve and tries to cram in a rehash of The Hunger Games to ensure her readers don't get too bored. There may be a new terrain and different competitors, but it remains the same old Hunger Games. And without the freshness of the last games, the tension that has built up fizzles out. The world-weary and battle-scarred competitors are far less beguiling than their younger counterparts were, and they have neither the time nor, it seems, the compunction to make much of an impact. The effect is that what is supposed to be a dramatic finale to set of the final volume becomes a rushed and truncated affair.

Basically, Catching Fire is too short. The first two thirds are perfectly paced, intriguing and at least as eyes-glued-to-the-page-exciting as The Hunger Games. Probably more so. But the second Hunger Games is crammed in; there is no chance for the tension to ratchet up or the other characters to make sense. The entire reading experience is unbalanced by the distracting knowledge that the pages are running away quicker than the plot is finding resolution. It is a disappointing way to end what is otherwise an exhilarating read.

But pleasingly, the rerun of the Hunger Games is also its epitaph. For better or worse, the final book will have to tread completely new territory. There will be no comforting returns to the all encompassing power of Panem, no reality TV nightmares, no sparkling costumes on launch nights, none of the routine features that have worked so well up until now. The first two-thirds of Catching Fire suggest that Suzanne Collins is more than capable of living up to the hype that will inevitably surround its release. Mockingjay should be a dramatically different book, and I'm awaiting it all the more eagerly for this.

Edition shown: US edition, Scholastic Press, September 2009, ISBN: 9780439023498, 400 pp
Current UK edition: Scholastic, September 2009, ISBN: 9781407109367, 480 pp

7.5 out of 10

Book Review: The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins

Read: September 2009

The Hunger Games on one Tweet-sized chunk:
The Hunger Games is exciting, enjoyable, and escapist. A swashbuckling action-packed adventure guarunteed to engross readers of all ages.

I don’t know exactly when it was, but sometime last year I fell out of love with reading. Books that would usually be read in a couple of days were taking weeks to finish, whole weeks went by when I didn’t even think of picking up a book. It wasn’t that I was reading bad books but for some reason my mind wasn’t in a place to be transported by them as it often is.

Yet amidst the books I failed to get enthused by there were a few notable exceptions and first among them was The Hunger Games. I didn’t just read it from cover to cover. I devoured it. I read it whilst walking to work, I read it at my desk on my lunch break, I read it walking home again in the evening. I finished it at 4am on a weekday, then picked up and read the first chapter of the second book, Catching Fire, before finally snatching a couple of hours sleep. It is exciting, enjoyable, and escapist: some of the best things a work of fiction can be.

Set in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic future America known as Panem, The Hunger Games is an annual reality TV show that pits 12 boys and 12 girls against each other in a battle to the death. For the winner: fame and fortune. The other twenty-three competitors leave in body bags.

It’s a particularly repugnant society that could let such barbarism take place, and Panem is worse than repugnant. Ever since the Capitol won a civil war many years ago, it has ruled its twelve Districts with an iron fist. Movement between districts is utterly impossible, food strictly rationed. Any sign of rebellion is punishable with death. And the jewel in the crown of their control, the very demonstration of power and means by which it is exerted, lies in The Hunger Games.

Katniss Everdeen is sixteen-year-old growing up in District 12, a poor coal-mining area of the Appalachians. Her father was killed in a mining accident when she was just a child and ever since then her mother has suffered bouts of depression. For years she has supported the family, hunting illegally outside the electrified fences and learning to take care of herself. She is tough and skilled and absolutely terrified that her name will be selected to compete in The Hunger Games. But there is one thing she fears even more than certain death…

Combining commentary on the exploitation of Big Brother-style reality television with political angst, teenage defiance, and tonnes of action adventure violence, The Hunger Games is as exciting as reading gets. Katniss and the other characters are utterly beguiling, their situation the stuff of nightmares. One cannot remain emotionally uninvolved or neutral. There are spectacular costumes that dazzle with subtle messages of defiance, people willing to spend all they have to keep their competitors alive. There can have been few societies – either in history or fiction – whose moral bankruptcy is so extensive as the wealthy and materialistic Capitol's. The eagerness with which they consume The Hunger Games is truly gruesome. They get bored if there aren't enough deaths, gamble on the fate of the competitors, tune in to 'round-up' shows that show the days dramatic battles. There is something of the Colosseum blood-lust to their viewing, but mixed with detached indifference. There is a gap between everyday reality and the movie style 'reality' of the TV.

I love the slightly disturbing direction that Young Adult fiction has taken in the past decade or so. Earlier this week I finally got around to reading The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and became aware of how adeptly this type of book can distil complex situations into emotionally involving portrayals of common humanity. The visceral reaction they produce reminds us that sometimes there really things which are just morally wrong.

The Hunger Games is one of them. If it weren’t for the breathless pace of the plot that keeps the pages being turned, one might cast the book away in disgust. Yet the violence, though ever present, is not gratuitous and always couched within a healthy sense of disgust for what is happening. It is humanity that shines through strongest, simple friendship developed in extraordinary situations.

The Hunger Games is a swashbuckling action-packed adventure guaranteed to engross readers of all ages. The prose doesn’t shine, the premise shamelessly derivative (Battle Royale anyone?), the plot twists largely predictable. But sometimes that just doesn’t matter. If you are looking for a quick and involving escapist read then they don’t get much better than this.

Edition shown: US edition, Scholastic Press, September 2008, ISBN: 9780439023481, 384 pp

Current UK edition: Scholastic Books, January 2009, ISBN: 9781407109084, 464 pp

7.5 out of 10

Submarine - Joe Dunthorne

Read: January 2009

Submarine in one tweet sized chunk:
Very funny, irreverent, caustic, and smart, Submarine announces the arrival of a talented young comic author.

“I've decided that I'm not going to write a diary. It puts my reputation in danger. I'm going to keep a 'log'. It's going to be seriously buff: there will be no emotions; there will be no emoticons; it will be sprayed with bullet points like the wings of the Luftwaffe after the Vickers K machine gun was introduced.”

Submarine was first brought to my attention because my friend Megan Bradbury is listed in the acknowledgements section at the back. She studied with Joe Dunthorne on the same M.A. in Creative Writing course at the University of East Anglia where much of Submarine was written and for which he was awarded the Curtis Brown scholarship. A couple of years later, when Submarine had been published to much critical acclaim, Joe agreed to come and do a reading as part of UEA Loves Books where he regaled a not particularly full graduate bar with a passage of explicit prose which made any latecomers blush and leave as quickly as possible. Because of all this, I have an affinity for Joe Dunthorne which has nothing to do with the contents of this book.

However, it is the book which I am here to talk about so here we go. In that direction we now head. Oliver Tate is fifteen, living in Swansea, and trying desperately to live up to as many teenage stereotypes as humanly possible. He is highly sexed, self-involved, capricious, convinced he must be a genius, and utterly derisive of the intricacies of other people. His mind is awash with pornography, long words, his parents marital problems, school, exams, and capoeira (no, I didn’t know what it was either, but apparently it is an Afro-Brazilian martial art form of meditative dance). He is more Adrian Mole than Holden Caulfield, though Adrian Mole with attitude and disdain for the twee uncertainties which plagued the adolescence of Mr. Mole. He studies the dictionary and litters his writing with words like fastigium and apotheosis.

It is all very very funny. I read the first fifty pages in a rush, barely pausing to breathe in-between bouts of hysterical laughter. Oliver’s mind jumps from subject to subject like a grasshopper jumping between leaves. I have not laughed so hard at any work of fiction since Catch-22. Dunthorne does a fantastic job of crafting the dysfunctional Oliver, imbuing him with all the misconceptions of an unreliable narrator. His actions are caustic, at times you want to reach into the book and give him a good hard slap. When he begins to date a pyromaniac named Jordana you hope that he will settle down, but if anything his behaviour becomes even more erratic.
Oliver is a caricature of a person we have all feared we once were, even if it was only for a short period in our adolescence. He has good intentions (often) but (even more often) they backfire, causing greater problems than those he began with. But he does have a good heart. There is one beautiful scene where he takes his father to the fair on a Saturday night, and encourages him to have fun without any embarrassment at being seen out in public with a parent. It is a rouse to cure his father's depression, and does not succeed, but that doesn't matter. It is touching, engaging, incoherent, and encapsulates his quest perfectly.

The only thing that lets Submarine down is its plot. Somewhere about halfway through it looses its way and you get the feeling you are treading water, existing simply to give Oliver a platform to think aloud rather than to reach an exciting conclusion. This doesn’t make for a nail-biting or rapidly onrushing finale, but it does lend an air of simple growth to what takes place. And at risk of sounding all Saturday evening TV on you, isn’t that what being a teenager is all about? Making mistakes, learning from them, and trying never to be quite such a brat again.

If you are looking for an enjoyable, amusing read then Submarine is great. Joe Dunthorne is a witty, irreverent writer of great promise. He is a nice guy as well. And if you like Submarine and want to see him reading live, why not come along to Debut at Norwich Arts Centre on June 23^rd, an evening of words and music with some of the hottest young writers around, including Chris Killen and Jenn Ashworth. For tickets and more information see the Norwich Arts Centre website here.

7 out of 10

Before I Die - Jenny Downham

Read: August 2007

Okay so picture this. It is a sunny Wednesday afternoon and it is my birthday. I am sitting at the till in a deserted shop with silent tears running down my cheeks as I desperately attempt to finish this book before I go off on holiday for a week. I should probably add that I am a rapidly balding, newly twenty-five year old man!

But enough about my biography, I should be talking about this fine book. Like The Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas and The Book Thief this is a teenage book which would be equally comfortable in adult sections. The plot follows the last year in the life of sixteen year old cancer victim Tessa as she seeks to accomplish a list of life experiences before she dies. First on the list is sex. Then there are drugs and breaking the law and spending a day saying yes to everything and, of course, becoming famous. With the help of her only friend Zoey, and a neighbour named Adam, Tessa sets out on a classic coming of age story, the tragedy being that she never will (come of age).

I was particularly impressed with the ability of the author to get inside Tessa’s head, to investigate the unexpected spontaneity of the mind and there are some fabulous feats of description. It is moving without ever becoming morose or self indulgent and it is such a pleasure to see children’s fiction able to tackle such complex issues.

This is a book for a rainy afternoon’s reading and we have had plenty of those recently! Buy this book, I guarantee you will enjoy it.


7 out of 10

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll

I was disappointed by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. So much has been made of them, and I expected a lot, but pretty quickly I was left under whelmed. The problem, as I see it, is that all the glorious characters such as the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat, the March Hare and so forth, the ones who have made it into popular folklore, are barely involved in the plot. Fantastic, delightful creations though they are, we meet them for only a brief moment, and then they are gone and we are on to the next adventure. I found the pace of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland frustratingly fast. The plot jumps around like a jack-in-a-box on speed, you never have a second to catch up and enjoy what is happening. There are great ideas for characters, but you never get a chance to find out how great they are because they do not stick around long enough. My personal favourite was the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon. At least they had a whole chapter to themselves! They made me laugh, they made me think – if I was 6 I think they may have opened a whole world for me. And for once, I had enough time to get to know them, to feel comfortable in their presence.

I don’t really understand how these characters have captured people’s imaginations so. It’s a cool idea to have a cat with invisible powers and a Cheshire grin, but he doesn’t really do anything else. Similarly the Mad Hatter is slightly barmy, and wears a big hat as he makes his absurd pronouncements, but that’s about it. Because of this, I preferred Alice Through the Looking Glass, I had no expectations and the plot moved a little slower.

It is not that Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is in any way bad. Far from it. It is witty, and joyful. The playfulness of the language is an absolute joy, second to no book I have ever read. It is thunderously funny and laugh-out-loud ingenious. Every single page is crammed with witty word play and smart remarks. And Alice Through the Looking Glass is even more barmy than Alice in Wonderland!

I suspect that to truly appreciate these two Alice books, one must read them as a child or with a child. You can see why they have stood the test of time, because they are magical, inspirational, and challenging. I could almost picture the joy on a child’s face as they read them. I cannot wait until I have children of my own, and can share that joy. But as an adult discovering them for first time, I was a little disappointed.


6.5 out of 10