★★★★☆ Haymitch's story

Sunrise on the Reaping

Suzanne Collins

I read Suzanne Collins's main Hunger Games trilogy years ago, when it was first published. Consequently, while I remembered Panem and the structure of the Hunger Games, I had forgotten most of the minor characters. When I began Sunrise on the Reaping I had no idea who Haymitch Abernathy was. That worked to my advantage, because I didn't know the most important thing about Haymitch -- that he would survive. Indeed, Haymitch's death felt like a real possibility almost to the end. Sunrise on the Reaping could, I think, be read as the first book of the Hunger Games series.

Haymitch is a minor but important character in the novel The Hunger Games, where he appears as the only surviving District 12 victor, and thus as Peeta and Katniss's mentor. He's an old drunken reprobate, but crafty. (In the movie, which I watched last night after finishing Sunrise, he is played by the reliable Woody Harrelson, who has, to my perception, better chemistry with Katniss/Jennifer Lawrence than either of her purported lovers.)

Sunrise on the Reaping takes place 24 years before The Hunger Games. Haymitch has not yet achieved old drunken reprobate status. In fact, the story begins on his sixteenth birthday. Haymitch is the hard-working son of a washerwoman and the lover of Lenore Dove. He's not exactly respectable, since he supplements his income by helping out a bootlegger. But this is as close to respectable as a poor kid can get in Twelve and still survive. Like Katniss 24 years later, Haymitch is reaped without being chosen in the lottery.

After that we get pretty much the story you expect. Haymitch and the other tributes are taken to the Capital, where they compete in the 50th Annual Hunger Games and, as already revealed, Haymitch comes out on top. There follows a brief epilog in which we learn how he turned into the sot who serves as Katniss's mentor.

I might have given Sunrise on the Reaping five stars as a standalone. However, I was a little disappointed at how similar Haymitch is to Katniss in character, and how similar the overall plot arc was to The Hunger Games. The Hunger Games is a very good novel, and Sunrise on the Reaping is also a very good novel. But hey felt to me like almost the same very good novel. The second time is never as good as the first.

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