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A review by vossnraven
This Perfect Day by Ira Levin
5.0
I love The Giver. One of my favorite books. I read this a few years after reading The Giver for the first time, and haven't touched The Giver once since, aside from moving it into my new bookself.
I see This Perfect Day as a grown-up version of The Giver. The sameness, the control, the fear of the outside--they all translate. Even the main character with a single genetic 'flaw' connects the two. But, as he tended to do, Ira Levin made you worry. Reading the book a little too late at night can easily make you nervous, jumpy, and generally on edge. Which is what Levin was known for, in all of his dystopian works.
What does bother me? A single scene. A rape scene between the main romantic players. As with other fiction in the era, men couldn't be men if they had a romantic sexual encounter. Don't let it turn you off of reading an otherwise fantastic book, one of my all-time favorites.
I see This Perfect Day as a grown-up version of The Giver. The sameness, the control, the fear of the outside--they all translate. Even the main character with a single genetic 'flaw' connects the two. But, as he tended to do, Ira Levin made you worry. Reading the book a little too late at night can easily make you nervous, jumpy, and generally on edge. Which is what Levin was known for, in all of his dystopian works.
What does bother me? A single scene. A rape scene between the main romantic players. As with other fiction in the era, men couldn't be men if they had a romantic sexual encounter. Don't let it turn you off of reading an otherwise fantastic book, one of my all-time favorites.