Gathering Blue
Well, it was a good read, one that I believe is perfectly geared towards an audience of children, because it didn’t exactly explore such distressing themes. Sure, there were strange practices, and toddlers (called ‘tykes’ in the novel) being treated like second-rate citizens which doesn’t really make sense because why should any society treat their children like that with so much disrespect? It is your children who will replace you and will keep you alive in their memory. Better to keep it a memory they cherish, not one they close their eyes to.
The worldbuilding was interesting, and I really liked the concept of one’s name having more syllabuses as they age (four’s the maximum), but it wasn’t that interesting as the first novel in the series, The Giver, and the village world in here was technologically inferior than the community we were introduced to in the first book. I did like how much importance and plot was focused on artists and their crafts, and the problems that arise when their gifts are invaded by foreign occupation and thus are forced to travel through channels they’d rather not flow through. But, honestly, threading is boring as hell. Like there are so many creative practices in the world. Lowry, you had to make the protagonist a weaver? There were no writers, or sculptors, nor painters. Only a weaver, a wood craftsman, and two singers. Quite limited creatively.
The novel dragged in the middle, and Kira’s not a very unique fictional character. The only things that make her different in the novel is her disability and her talent of weaving. Otherwise, she’d just blend in. Also, really misogynistic of a culture/society to bar women from reading. Like, come on, really? I thought we were past all this, although yes, this is a different world distinct from reality.
The ending was nice, and (spoiler alert) I liked how she reunited with her father at the end, although why she didn’t leave that tyrannical village to live her own life with her father in a town that accepts flaws will never make sense to me. The Council of Edifice sounded like a bunch of idiots who’re too glued in tradition and lack creativity, hence why they enslave artists. And the family dynamics are just awful in the village. Wives beating their tykes and withholding food from them so they themselves can have it, and hubbies (husbands; it’s just what the text calls them) beating their wives, and like God, the cyclic nature of violence is clearly ossified here for future museum display.
I did like Matt and his dog Branch. They were the comedic element to the novel, and had their quirks and gifts. Thomas, the carver, just seemed like another young man you’d see downstreet; could he and Kira possibly be a couple in the next novel? Maybe. Maybe not. I hope Vandera gets her throat slit by her hubby, and that Jamison falls from his desk and breaks his neck.
It was an okay read, but could’ve had more. At least it was short, around just the same length as The Giver. It did have a unique sense of worldbuilding, but the themes here weren’t at all provoking. The novel doesn’t stand out, and fails to ask the serious questions about life that The Giver doesn’t shy from. I hope Messenger is better.
name & author: Gathering Blue (Lois Lowry)
rating: ★★★
line: A story set in a uniquely contrasted world from ours that expounds on the importance of creatives and the role of their gifts in a tyrannical society that uses them, but doesn’t go any further in questions that linger with the reader.
finished: on march 6th