Book Review: Hunger Games

      I have a problem with the sudden popularity of teen and young adult literature.  My problem isn't that it's popular with kids, these are the people who are supposed to enjoy it.  In fact, I'm ecstatic that young adults are finding such enjoyment from reading, something that has been lost with recent generations of kids.  My problem is how popular these novels are with adults.  As interesting as some of the storylines may be, they aren't written for the adult mind.  I've read Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone.  I've read Twilight.  The language is simple, the themes are dumbed down.  These are books written for the enjoyment of children, adults should find them childish and boring.  If you are an adult looking for these types of stories read Tolkien's Lord Of The Rings or Erin Morgenstern's Night Circus or Ann Rice's Vampire Chronicles.  These are books that use adult vocabulary and tackle adult themes.
     Even though I have these issues with Young Adult literature, I have another problem which is my need to know what all the fuss and hype is all about.  That is why I read Harry Potter.  That is why I read Twilight.  And that is why I asked my middle school teacher friends if they had a copy of Hunger Games I could borrow.  Like most of you, I couldn't avoid hearing about this series of novels and the up coming movies; how the premise was so new and fresh and empowering to young women.  The thing is, the premise didn't sound so fresh to me.  I had read a Japanese novel called Battle Royal years ago about a class of school children forced by the government to fight to the death on a secluded island.  If you combine that novel with Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" and any number of today's reality television shows you get the premise of Hunger Games.
     So I procured a copy of the book and read in an attempt to prove just how right I was and just how unoriginal and unworthy of buzz the book was.  The first half of the book didn't let me down.  The book's writing was clearly aimed at a 14 year-old girl.  There was nothing challenging about the language or themes, nothing of any interest in the story for an adult and every plot point and twist rang of something taken from another already established source.  And then, mid-story, something changed.  The language was just as simple and the writing just as geared for children, but suddenly the characters had more depth and their dilemmas were becoming more complex.  I found the way the game messed with Katniss' emotions endlessly intriguing.  Was her relationship with the baker for real or an act needed for survival?  How was her behavior going to affect her future relationships?  What does her ability to compartmentalize her emotions say about her as a person?  And will any of this have an affect on both her physical and emotional growth?  By books end I found myself interested in what was going to happen next, how Katniss was going to deal with the very adult emotional tangle she found herself in, where else was this story going to go, something I could not say about either the first Harry Potter or Twilight books.
     I'm not sure whether to classify Huger Games as a guilty pleasure or an excellently written young Adult novel.  It certainly doesn't come with the acclaim of the Harry Potter books, which in all honesty I only read on of and couldn't find a compelling reason to read more of.  The style style and themes of the book are very much aimed at young girls, but it never pretends or sells itself as anything else.  Even with that against it, I found it much more enjoyable a read then any other Young Adult novel I've read as an adult (other then Slam which probably had more to do with the fact I love Nick Hornby).  I enjoyed it so much I've been asking the same teacher friends for the follow up novels.  So, I guess there are instances where adults can find pleasure in Young Adult novels after all.