The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Story: Long ago there was a war. The inhabitable part of the US, now Panem, is divided into 12 Districts overseen by the Captiol. Each year, as a reminder of the Districts’ subservience to the Capitol there are the Hunger Games: an extreme reality TV series in which two teenage tributes from each District face off in a booby-trapped arena. The last tribute left alive is the victor.

When Katniss Everdeen’s kid sister, Prim, is selected as a tribute for District 12, Katniss, offers to take her place. As preparations for the Games get underway, the District 12 publicity team concoct a romance between Katniss and fellow tribute, Peeta Mellark to give them the viewers’ sympathy in the arena.

In the arena things get bloody. Katniss realises that there’s far more at stake than just her life. If she and Peeta can form a real alliance, they have the power to stand up against more than just the other tributes.

Let the Games begin.

And Why is it Brilliant? On a basic level, this is a pacey, action-packed story. I sat down with it one afternoon and literally did not look up until I’d finished. The world Collins creates is fascinating and all-consuming. It’s also incredibly violent. The Games are survival of the fittest, and Collins doesn’t sugar coat that.

Katniss is a gutsy, well-rounded character. She’s got plenty of flaws; she’s stubborn, brash and not afraid to defend herself, but that’s what makes her engaging. What’s more, she’s far more interesting than certain other YA heroines (who shall remain nameless) who mope around waiting for a knight in shining armour to turn up and fight all their battles for them. 

On a deeper level, The Hunger Games offers an intelligent critique of ‘reality’ TV, media censorship and totalitarian governments without hitting readers over the head with political diatribe.

More Like This?

The Hunger Games is the first in a trilogy and the proceeding volumes, Catching Fire and Mockingjay are equally awesome.

The series reminded me of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four. On speed. And if you haven’t read this classic, I’d highly recommend it, it’s one of those books that will change your life.

Stylistically, it was similar to John Marsden’s Tomorrow serries, and Katniss reminded me a lot of Marsden’s protagonist, Ellie. I love, love luuurved these books the first time I read them, and when I get a moment, I’ll definitely be rereading them and chucking some reviews up!

Red Spikes

The Story: There are ten actually, all a little bit quirky and more than a little unsettling. Giants steal children from their beds, toys come to life, all-powerful spirits possess the bodies of birds and school bullies take the form of terrifying monsters in this collection of stories that ventures beyond the ordinary, right down to the very gates of hell.

And Why is it Brilliant? You have to twist your thinking to get inside these stories. You also need to pay attention. It can be difficult to ‘get’ some of Lanagan’s tales, but when you do, it’s worth the work. They’re incredibly imaginative, and, more often than not, deeply disturbing. There’s not a word wasted, and none of the dull passages of exposition you get from so many fantasy authors, just sharp dialogue and blow-your-mind-up images.

More Like this? This is the first thing of Langan’s I’ve read, but I hear her first collection of stories, Black Juice and her latest novel, Tender Morsels are pretty specky.

Lanagan was recommended to me by L. L. Hannett, who writes some of the most chilling short stories I’ve ever read. They’ve mostly appeared in literary mags, and there’s a lot of them. Check them out on her website: www.lisahannett.com

Angela Carter has also has a similar style. I particularly love The Magic Toyshop. 

Paper Towns by John Green

The Story: Q is in love with the girl next door. But, though they were once childhood friends, the beautiful, daring, so-much-larger-than-life-she’s-practically-mythic Margo Roth-Spiegelman is now the most popular girl in school and seemingly well beyond the reach of the nerdy Q. That is until the night she climbs through his window dressed as a ninja with a list of things they need To Do before morning.

While Q hopes this night of epic pranks will be the beginning of something gooey-wonderful between them, he soon discovers Margo intended it as a grand finale. She isn’t in school the next day, or the day after that. In fact, Margo Roth-Spiegelman has disappeared.

Spurred by the memory of their one kiss, Q sets out to follow the cryptic clues Margo has left behind, and enlisting his few friends to launch a rescue mission that will take them to places far darker than they ever could have imagined. 

And Why is it Brilliant? Everything that John Green writes is a-frickin-mazing, but I think Paper Towns is his best yet. On the surface it’s very funny and quirky, at least to begin with, but underneath it’s incredibly, despairingly dark and left me pondering Big Questions. Margo and Q are complex, flawed and funny characters that I absolutely fell in love with and the ending is both cathartic and unsettling. There are no easy answers in this book, no preachy ‘voices of adult authority,’ just a story I want to hold tight against my chest and never let go.

More Like This? John Green has two other novels, An Abundance of Katherines and Looking for Alaska, as well as Will Grayson, Will Grayson, which he co-wrote with David Levithan. He also writes short stories and is the mastermind behind Nerdfighters: http://nerdfighters.ning.com Hopefully he’s busy writing more books because I seriously cannot get enough of this guy. SO FRICKIN’ AWESOME!

Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why has a similar feel, and I lurve luuurve luuuureved it!

Scarlett Thomas’s Going Out, PopCo and The End of Mr. Y – also very witty, lots of word play, puzzles and Big Ideas and just really fun to read.

Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics, although the excessive intertextuality is more than a little befuddling.

Simmone Howell’s Notes from the Teenage Underground and Everything Beautiful have a similar style, but the endings are a bit preachy for my liking. 

‘You left me Perhapsless, stuck in your goddamned labyrinth.’

I pinched this quote from John Green’s Looking for Alaska. The book, one of my favourites, is about a group of friends at an Alabama boarding school, who are trying to find their way out of the labyrinth of suffering. So much of what I’ve been reading lately, stuff like Mark Z. Danielwski’s House of Leaves and Scarlett Thomas’s Our Tragic Universe, contains a labyrinth.

The labyrinth is a Gothic metaphor for the inescapable darkness within us. It’s every shameful thing you’ve ever done, and that has been done to you. It’s your lies and secrets, your fears, your nightmares. It’s heartache and melancholy and all the things too terrible to put a name to, every black thought, every hateful word. The labyrinth is our knowledge that the world is broken. Irreparable.

I’ve read a lot of pretty naff ‘coming-of-age’ novels that try to convince readers that adulthood lies beyond the labyrinth, as though when you reach a certain point of maturity the foggy confusion of youth will clear and the right path will light up before you. Well, I’m twenty-four and still waiting, and the older I get, the more I’m convinced that no one ever really escapes the labyrinth, not alive anyway.

But we’re not alone in the labyrinth. We have family, friends and lovers walking beside us. Even if we find ourselves sometimes alone, there are always points of light—uncontrollable bursts of giggles, conspiratorial smiles, drunken dancing, moments of epiphany, first kisses and warm summer afternoons that yawn into the night. There are poems, pictures, photos, films and plays that commiserate with us, inspire us and remind us what it means to be human. There are those special songs whose rhythms make our blood sing. And there are books.

There’s nothing a good book can’t get me through. And that’s why I’ve started this blog. I want make a record of those books that act as my lights in the labyrinth, whether it be because they expand my thinking, allow me to escape, or because they are simply dazzling.

If you have suggestions, particularly YA books that break from or challenge the ‘coming-of-age’ formula, get in touch: firefliesinthelabyrinth@gmail.com

I am a wayfarer seeking fireflies in the labyrinth.