THE GIVER movie being made. Jeff Bridges to star?

If you choose to read the book, which I'd recommend to you, you might change your mind about the movie. I can't judge it without actually seeing it, but everything I've read suggests it's not a well thought out adaptation. I can see that youth dystopian stories like The Hunger Games are hot right now, but that's not the sort of story that the book presents. The primary question that's presented in the book is, how much should you give up to create a "utopian" society? Jonas' community is very ideal and has accomplished many things, but it's only when he becomes the Giver's apprentice that he gets an opportunity to understand what the cost of that stability is.

 

None of that is in the book.

Spoiler: In the book

In the book, he escapes and hears music for the first time and finds it to be wonderful.

 

Indeed. Now I'm even less inclined to see it.

Spoiler: more potential book spoilers

The book does establish that if the Receiver dies or leaves prematurely, then the memories they hold will filter back to the community. It's very dangerous since they're not accustomed to dealing with them, and is the whole point of Rosemary. It's why the Giver elects to stay behind and help the community after Jonas leaves, because he still cares about them despite the community's flaws.

The exact process of how the memory transference works is never adequately explained in the book; it's implied that the community uses a form of genetic engineering and that certain traits like pale eyes and Fiona's red hair (which the Giver says must frustrate the geneticists) still occasionally crop up. It's possible the ability to become a Receiver is genetic in some way.

 

I think you'll like the book. I've never read any of the later stories, and maybe I'll get to that someday. But as I said above, I think one of the story's strengths is that there are no antagonists in the conventional sense. The community has become very one-dimensional, but if you lived in a world with the ability to control the environment so perfectly, where every need is provided from birth, then you might feel you need or want creativity as we define it.