In her strongest work to date, Lois Lowry once again creates a mysterious but plausible future world. It is a society ruled by savagery and deceit that shuns and discards the weak. Left orphaned and physically flawed, young Kira faces a frightening, uncertain future. Blessed with an almost magical talent that keeps her alive, she struggles with ever broadening responsibilities in her quest for truth, discovering things that will change her life forever.
As she did in The Giver, Lowry challenges readers to imagine what our world could become, and what will be considered valuable. Every reader will be taken by Kira's plight and will long ponder her haunting world and the hope for the future.
I think the minimalist approach in the writing of this book reflects the kind of society the characters live in. A kind of society whose standard of living and moral conventions are primitive at best. Children, or tykes, are brought forth out of societal obligations. That means, "extra help in the fields." The competition for space is determined by physical competencies; that is, the proverbial survival of the fittest. This society has no notion of religion, save that the cross was a thing of worship in the past and, therefore, should be treated as such. A society reduced and molded out of the ruins of the previous world, governed by beastly instincts more than humane principles, where good-fellowship is a rarity and stomachs rule over hearts. This book paints a picture of what a society is like when its people behave with the mentality of brutes and when predatory behavior is the norm.
And then there comes exemptions. I think this is one of the stronger messages of the book: a deficiency in part does not equate to a general defect. That people are different and they fare differently. But such is a struggle in a prejudiced community with its own ideas of who and what is acceptable, that whatever fits ill in a pattern is an outlier.
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