So yeah, finished up Mockingjay earlier tonight. God DAMN. I don't think I've cried so much reading a book (Imma count all 3 as one) since I read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by David Eggers for the first time (that's a semi-autobiographical story about a young guy with an 8 year old brother whose parents both suddenly die within a couple weeks of each other. The kid sort-of goes to live with the older brother, barely an adult himself, and hilarity ensues). I thought Catcher In The Rye was sad, too, but not in that in-your-face, we-aren't-going-to-sate-you-with-blood-or-dispassionate-adult-reactions-to-carnage-so-you-will-have-to-feel-every-inch-of-this-poor-girl's-pain sense that you get from this. This is the kind of book that makes you realize how fortunate you are to live in America in the 21st century but also makes you wary about how some elements present in the current culture could be our undoing.
As a (failed) writer, this is also the kind of book that fills me with that MASSIVE ambivalence that is the combination of "man, THIS is exactly the kind of thing I feel like I need to write" and "there is no way I could ever have produced a book of this quality". And so out of the blue! Did anyone else, prior to Hunger Games, even know who Suzanne Collins was, much less know that she was capable of such sublimity (I think "beauty" is definitely the wrong term here)?
