Let me open up this absolutely review with the precursor that I listened to Divergent through a book-on-tape from the library, and it was over the summer on a road trip, so a while ago. And so, maybe, the reader just completely ruined this book and emphasized every terrible detail about the plot and made me loathe the main character through his voice alone (and not the writing).
I really doubt it. But, hey, maybe there’s still a chance for some saving grace for Veronica Roth.
But now onto why I have no idea how Divergent is doing so well or why someone decided to make a movie out of that terrible book.
For those that haven’t read it, or are debating about reading it (if you are I’ll save you the time of reading hundreds of pages and just tell you right now to go study for the ACT, which, while tedious, would prevent you from losing faith in this world every time you see how many people like the book or what successes the movie is predicted to have), the novel is set in a dystopian society where humans are separated into one of five factions depending on what their prominent trait is.
There’s Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful) and Erudite (the intelligent). Children in this society grow up with their family until an appointed day when they’re 16, in which case they can choose to live with a different faction or stay where they’ve grown up.
The story centers around a girl named Beatrice and her decision to change factions from Abnegation to Dauntless.
In theory, it sounds like a good book. Pretty interesting, pretty exciting, the type of thing I would like.
It wasn’t.
Let’s start with the title. “Divergent” refers to those that are equally split between two different factions (which for some reason is super rare and forbidden). In the novel we find out that Tris is divergent. Ooh.
But seriously. How rare can Divergent people be? I don’t know about you, but no one single trait dominates my entire life, and if I had to choose one, it would probably be sarcasm or realism or something that’s not one of the factions. I find it hard to believe that there aren’t way more factionless people (who end up being homeless and wandering). I feel like…98% of people would be factionless. And even if everyone was forced to have a faction I feel like 98% would all be divergent. But not in the book. Nope. In the book everyone has one trait and having two traits means you’re super special.
Some other things that I noticed while listening to the novel that I couldn’t get over was the writing, certain (dumb)characteristics the factions had and the fact that Beatrice (who goes by Tris) irked me in so many ways I was actually rooting for her to fail.
My sister informed me that Roth wrote this novel in college. So while that’s still pretty young it’s old enough that you should be able to write a story in an interesting manner. And while it was interesting and a very good read to some people I could not stop thinking “Wow this is terrible.” I can’t pinpoint what exactly so turned me off by the style of writing, all I can say was that I didn’t like it. It didn’t keep me interested; I didn’t think it portrayed the right feelings,
Which is very obvious in the fact that I really hated the main character. I’m nearly positive main characters are supposed to be liked, especially in this novel, but not by me. She was obnoxious. If you’ve ever watched a Korean Drama and thought “Wow this female lead is so annoying can she not be in the show anymore?” that’s about parallel to how I felt about Tris. Roth tried to portray her as the underdog coming up from the bottom to get her way into the Dauntless faction, but I could not keep myself from wanting Tris to lose her fight and get kicked out or maybe fall between the train tracks.
The last, and one of the biggest, things that bothered me were the factions themselves. So Tris grows up in Abnegation, and obviously talks about their lifestyle a lot.
And wow, does their lifestyle suck. I get that they’re supposed to be “selfless” but they talk about how all their houses are the exact same, they wear clothing that’s basically gray potato sacks and, oh yeah, they carry around food to give to homeless people. It’s just so…random. I felt like selflessness wasn’t even really addressed in the Abnegation faction, it seemed more like a life of poverty and I honestly have no idea why anyone would choose to switch factions and go live in Abnegation.
When she’s 16, however, Tris switches to Dauntless. So Dauntless also gets a pretty thorough explanation. And Dauntless seemed to portray bravery even worse than Abnegation portrayed selflessness. One of the very first trials new Dauntless recruits had to face to see if they could stay was jumping from the elevated train tracks onto a platform landing. If you fell, you died. I guess that portrays bravery but it just seems like just trivial, childish bravery it’s one of those things where you pause and ask yourself, “is this a joke because it seems really dumb.” Well, it was like that to me.
Anyways, after they got to Dauntless the new recruits are all forced to fight each other and the top fighters win. That, to me, doesn’t show bravery at all. It shows brute physical strength and who had been in Dauntless before and so had trained in fighting previously.
But even though Tris had been a pathetic little Abnegation girl, she still managed to pull through.
And about her whole “underdog” thing. It makes no sense.With The Hunger Games and Katniss managing to do well, that made a little bit of sense. She had been hunting and was very skilled with bow and arrow and had a lot of people on her side. Tris had nothing. There was no reason for Tris to do as well as she did.
At another point in the novel Tris has been training with Dauntless for one week (maybe two) and then she talks about how her pants don’t fit her anymore because she’s gained so much muscle. I’m sorry but the average woman can gain less than ½ pound of muscle per week. And these aren’t designer skinny jeans Tris is trying to fit into, they’re workout clothes, they’re loose, they will not cease to fit a girl after she gains two pounds (being generous to Tris’s workout abilities).
Overall, Divergent was one of the worst books I’ve ever read in my life. The plot idea itself isn’t so bad, it’s just all the little details that made me go “this make no sense. This is so dumb” that I couldn’t take it seriously. I honestly hope the movie changes everything that happened in the book and saves that train wreck of a novel. If so, I might give the movie a chance.
But I mean, despite my personal opinion, this book has done fabulously. Both Divergent and the sequel Insurgent have been New York Times bestsellers, and they’re making a movie out of the trilogy, so there is a chance that you will like it if you decide to read it after this review. And by all means, go ahead. But if you tend to read books and notice flaws in plots or have strong opinions on what is stupid and what is not, the book may irritate you like it did me.
