The first book The Giver is set in a distant future in a commune where everything is centrally planned and the life of citizens is highly structured, efficient and void of any emotion. The main character Jonas is nearing his twelfth birthday, the time when members of the community find out their assigned occupation for the rest of their active life. Some kids are assigned to be nurturers who take care of newborns, others are birth mothers tasked with "producing" children, third work in a fish hatchery, etc. The assignments are made by the Elders committee who everyone unquestionably trusts to make the right choice. Jonas however, gets singled out during the ceremony and gets assigned the job of the "receiver". At first he is baffled by this job. No one else in the community seems to know what that is other than it is really important. Thus, Jonas meets "the Giver" who explains to him that Jonas is to become the Receiver of Memories. No one else in the community remembers the past and the Receiver is the one who bears this burden. As Jonas receives these memories, he realizes the depravity of the society he leaves in and decides to act.
Overall, the first book is very reminiscent of George Orwell's 1984. Although, Lowry's world is much more orderly, void of any emotion and in a way simplistic compared to Orwell. There is also a magical (or unexplained) element to the story. Jonas' special gift of being able to see beyond is never fully explained. Lowry also never provides any backstory for how this community became what it is with memories being passed only to one person.
The second book Gathering Blue shows us a completely different society in the same world. The life in this village is highly primitive. Most people live in simple dwellings and cannot read or write. the main character Kira has a physical defect from birth and now that her mother died, some villagers want to banish her since she cannot work as well as healthy people and thus presents a burden to the entire community. Kira, however, like Jonas in the first story, has a special gift. She is a talented weaver and the pieces she makes tell the story of what is or will happen soon. Also like Jonas, she wants to change the established life in her village.
In the third book, Messenger, the characters from the first two stories come together and we get a bigger picture of the world. Even though this is the shortest of the four books, I thought it was the most emotionally charged. I did however feel that a lot of things were unexplained, and ended up rating this book lower than the first two.
Finally, in the fourth book, we go back to the community that we originally saw in the Giver, but we follow a different character. Her name is Claire, she is only three years older than Jonas and she is a birth mother. Claire gives birth to a boy, but unlike other birth mothers, she has a difficulty during the birthing process and gets reassigned to a different job. In the process, no one prescribes to her the love-suppressing pills that everyone else in the community takes, and she ends up getting emotionally attached to her newborn. This is a story of her journey to reunite with her son and of the sacrifices she makes to find him. Her son Gabe also has a special gift and ultimately, it is he who ends up defeating a great evil and saves Claire's life.
The fourth book does tie everything nicely together. We get to see what happens to all the main characters from the quartet. However, the supernatural aspects of the world are never fully explained. It is almost as though some aspects of the story are purely metaphysical and generally deal with the nature of good and evil. I did like the fourth book better than the third. But it is still not as strong as the first two in my opinion. Overall, I highly recommend reading the entire quartet to get the full picture of the world and additional information about all the characters.
