Messenger
by Lois Lowry
Published: April 26, 2004
Genres: Dystopian, Young Adult
Format: eBook (192 pages)
Source: Gift
Matty has lived in Village and flourished under the guidance of Seer, a blind man known for his special sight. Village once welcomed newcomers, but something sinister has seeped into Village and the people have voted to close it to outsiders. Matty has been invaluable as a messenger. Now he must risk everything to make one last journey through the treacherous forest with his only weapon, a power he unexpectedly discovers within himself.
Spoiler free even if you haven’t read the first books in this series.
Messenger is one of those books that I feel like went over my head. Or that I missed something important while reading it. I felt that way mostly because of the end. It was abrupt, strange, and extremely open-ended (Lois Lowry seems to like those). The end didn’t seem to have much to do with the rest of the book.
I really liked the first part of Messenger. I liked the idea of the Village full of people who had come from bad governments so they all agreed that there would be no secrets since that was the source of the corruption from the places they came from. The trading in the marketplace brought up some really interesting ideas. There are people in the novel who trade something of worth, like their health, for something superficial, like games. Seems absurd except for the fact that we all do it. But when the trade is displayed with the price upfront in such blunt terms, it made me really think why I do that sometimes. Why DO I trade my sleep for a pointless TV show? The book doesn’t really answer that, it just brings up these questions for me to ponder. I like it when books do that.
Then the book shifts its focus to the Forrest which is where I got confused. I didn’t understand the symbolism of the Forrest (if there even is any) and why the resolution had to do with the Forrest and not the selfish people making these trades. The resolution felt too convenient and relied too much on a magical solution.
So far the Giver Series feels like they are all companion novels more than a series. Each book has had a different main character. Messenger is about a side character from Gathering Blue named Matty. I loved the character of Matty. I was glad to see that he got his own story. There are brief mentions of the characters from The Giver so you can see what happened to them since The Giver had an open ending.
Overall, it brought up some interesting ideas and I liked knowing the fate of the characters from The Giver, but I didn’t like the strange ending.
Content Rating: Everyone. Clean read.
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About Lois Lowry
Lois Lowry is known for her versatility and invention as a writer. She was born in Hawaii and grew up in New York, Pennsylvania, and Japan. After several years at Brown University, she turned to her family and to writing. She is the author of more than thirty books for young adults, including the popular Anastasia Krupnik series. She has received countless honors, among them the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award, the California Young Reader.s Medal, and the Mark Twain Award. She received Newbery Medals for two of her novels, NUMBER THE STARS and THE GIVER. Her first novel, A SUMMER TO DIE, was awarded the International Reading Association.s Children.s Book Award. Ms. Lowry now divides her time between Cambridge and an 1840s farmhouse in Maine.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
My name is Jessica. I love to read Young Adult and classic literature. I’ve been a book blogger for six years and I haven’t gotten tired of it yet. I’m a very curious reader. Writing about all the questions and thoughts I had while reading a book is the best hobby ever.
Hmm, so I haven’t actually read The Giver yet (for shame!). But I’m thinking that that one might be the only of this series I’ll read if this is the case for the rest of the books. I do think I’ll probably want to know about what happens to the characters from The Giver though!
Gathering Blue was boring. The Giver was so good though! I don’t think I’ve read this one, but I want to give this series another chance someday. I really want to read Son.