Matched Review

Recently I went to the Scholastic Book Warehouse sale and bought $160 worth of books for about $60.  Most of them were YA books.  (Becoming a middle grades LA teacher has it's perks.) Now on to the reason I started this blog.

So the first book I read out of this major haul was Matched by Ally Condie.  (http://matched-book.com/) If you are a fan of The Giver by Lois Lowry, or even if you are not, this book is a much more modern version without the memory transfers.  It is first person narrative by the main character, Cassia, and goes in a more romantic direction.  While The Giver focuses on the main character, Jonas, receiving the memories of the past, Cassia is more focused on her Match, the boy she is paired up with to eventually marry.  She gets matched with the oh-so-hunky (of course) Xander, Cassia's best friend.  Everyone is thrilled.  The stinker of it is, she finds out that her Match to Xander may have been a mistake when another boy shows up on her Match card. She starts to get to know about the other boy that could be her real Match and finds herself falling in love with him instead of the boy the Officials say she will marry.  Quite the conundrum.

I did enjoy reading this very much, and I am positive I will eventually read the other two.  But what I actually enjoyed most about it were the comparisons to The Giver I kept finding.  The Giver has been one of my favorite books since I was in fourth grade, and I tend to read it about once a year.  I think reading both of them together would be pretty interesting in a classroom situation, or maybe just on your own.  My favorite reference to the earlier book was Xander asking Cassia if she enjoyed riding bicycles.  She said that she hates it because they don't go anywhere.  In The Giver, everyone gets around on bicycles, it is the only mode of transportation.  It was just a cute little reference that I am not even positive the author did on purpose, but if she did, kudos to her.

I liked that in Matched, the Society came up with ways to keep hold of the past, even if it was only a very tenuous hold.  They have the Hundred Songs, Poems, Stories, Paintings, etc.  Each person is allowed one "artifact" from the past societies that are passed down from one generation to the next.  When I compare this to The Giver, I see those songs, poems, and artifacts as the Memories.  Except in the case of the Society, everyone has access to them, not just one person singled out to keep them all.

The similarities are really well done too.  The Matching of course where the government picks out your spouse, as well as your job, your residence, and your time of death.  There is even a ceremony for dying in Matched just like in The Giver.  And just like Jonas, Cassia has to come to a decision. Will she continue to live in a society where every choice is made for you, content to live out a life that has been determined by statistical analysis and where everyone is the same?  Or will she break free from the mold and make her own choices?

It really gives you something to think about.  What if it were you where all your choices were predetermined.  Your life would be fulfilling and programed for optimum happiness, but without complete free will.  I honestly don't know what I would choose.