Is there an audiobook of The Giver (Giver Quartet, Book 1)?

Yes. The Giver (Giver Quartet, Book 1) has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Ron Rifkin.

How long is the The Giver (Giver Quartet, Book 1) audiobook?

The The Giver (Giver Quartet, Book 1) audiobook runs 4 hr 47 min.

Is The Giver (Giver Quartet, Book 1) on Kindle Unlimited?

Yes. The Giver (Giver Quartet, Book 1) was included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on July 12, 2026.

The Giver (Giver Quartet, Book 1) by Lois Lowry book cover for the Book of the Day dystopian book review

Our score

4.7/ 5

Outstanding

Listen to The Giver (Giver Quartet, Book 1) free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

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EDITION PUBLISHEDApril 1993

Genres

Fiction Dystopian Young Adult

Themes

Memory and inherited painThe cost of enforced samenessAutonomy versus safetyComing of age through moral awakening

The Giver (Giver Quartet, Book 1)

Name: The Giver (Giver Quartet, Book 1)
Price: 11.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Lois Lowry

Lois Lowry

Lois Lowry's Newbery-winning novel drops a boy into a community that has traded color, pain, and choice for perfect order, then hands him the one job that lets him see what was given up. It's the rare dystopia built for readers just old enough to notice the wiring under the floorboards.

The Review

Our take

The Giver runs on a single, brutal piece of worldbuilding: a society that solved conflict by removing the ability to feel it. Jonas's community assigns spouses, jobs, and even memory itself, and everyone seems fine with that, because fine is the only setting left on the dial. Lowry doesn't spend chapters justifying the mechanism. She just shows you a boy riding his bike past identical houses, using careful, precise language because imprecision itself is treated as a small moral failure, and lets the wrongness accumulate in the gaps between what's said and what's clearly true.

The turn comes when Jonas is named Receiver of Memory, the single person in the community allowed to hold everything the rest of them gave up: snow, sunburn, war, color, grief, love. Watching him take on the old Giver's memories one at a time is where the book earns its premise. Each session costs him something physical, a jolt of pain or a wave of vertigo, before it hands him a piece of the world back. That's the move I love most here: the price of knowing is paid in the body, not just narrated as an idea. Lowry never lets the big philosophical question, whether safety is worth this much erasure, sit as an abstraction. She makes Jonas ache for it.

What sneaks up on you is how the community's cruelty hides inside its politeness. Nobody shouts. Nobody seems oppressed. Release, the community's word for what happens to the old, the sick, and the unwanted, is discussed in the same flat tone as a weather report, and the book trusts a young reader to catch the horror before an adult character ever names it. That restraint is the whole engine of the story: Jonas figures out the truth roughly when we do, and his growing unease becomes ours.

Why you should read

Readers who like ideas with real emotional stakes
Fans of quiet dystopias built on control, not violence
Anyone who wants a gateway into speculative fiction for younger readers
Readers drawn to ambiguous, discussion-worthy endings

What to expect

Spare, controlled prose that matches its controlled society
A slow reveal of what utopia actually costs
Short chapters and brisk pacing
A deliberately open, debatable ending

The ending stays ambiguous enough that people still argue about what actually happens on that hill, and I think that's exactly right for a book about a kid choosing an uncertain, feeling world over a controlled, comfortable one. Thirty years on, it still reads like the blueprint half the dystopian shelf borrowed from, but nothing since has matched how much weight it puts on one boy's hands.

Reviewed by Rowan · How our reviews are written

Our verdict

4.7/ 5

Outstanding

Listen to The Giver (Giver Quartet, Book 1) free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

Included with Kindle Unlimited Buy on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Prices may vary.

Where to read or listen

Is there an audiobook of The Giver (Giver Quartet, Book 1)?: Yes. The Giver (Giver Quartet, Book 1) has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Ron Rifkin.
Listen to The Giver (Giver Quartet, Book 1) free with an Audible trial
We earn from qualifying Amazon purchases.
How long is the The Giver (Giver Quartet, Book 1) audiobook?: The The Giver (Giver Quartet, Book 1) audiobook runs 4 hr 47 min.
Is The Giver (Giver Quartet, Book 1) on Kindle Unlimited?: Yes. The Giver (Giver Quartet, Book 1) was included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on July 12, 2026.
How much does The Giver (Giver Quartet, Book 1) cost?: On Amazon: Kindle $11.99, Paperback $6.33, Hardcover $10.83. Prices as of August 22, 2026 at 3:45 AM EDT and may change.

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Common questions

What is The Giver (Giver Quartet, Book 1) about?: The Giver runs on a single, brutal piece of worldbuilding: a society that solved conflict by removing the ability to feel it. Jonas's community assigns spouses, jobs, and even memory itself, and everyone seems fine with that, because fine is the only setting left on the dial. Lowry doesn't spend…
Is The Giver (Giver Quartet, Book 1) worth reading?: We scored The Giver (Giver Quartet, Book 1) 4.7 out of 5. Lois Lowry's Newbery-winning novel drops a boy into a community that has traded color, pain, and choice for perfect order, then hands him the one job that lets him see what was given up. It's the rare dystopia built for readers just old enough to notice the wiring under the…