Ember is for all ages
By James Allen, Staff Writer
Most authors’ debut novels usually end up on the bottom shelf of a discount cart at a bookstore. They tend to be modestly promising, a sort of foundation on which the author builds his career. This is not true for Jeanne DuPrau’s debut novel The City of Ember, a book you will not want to put down until you run out of pages.
The book’s two main characters, Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow, live in a city called Ember, where no natural light can be found. The entire city must rely on lamps in order to see. Its power source is a mysterious underground generator powered by a raging underground river. Beyond the city lights is nothing but complete blackness. When the lights go out in the city at night, nothing can be seen. Portable lights do not exist. The city is entirely self-contained and self-maintained. Nothing is known about the creation of the city or anything beyond its walls.
At the age of 12, the citizens begin working. The food is rationed and is grown primarily from a greenhouse or is retrieved from the storage units which, at first, seemed to be endless. However, the supplies start to run low.
The Builders, those who made the city, left a message in a small box should the eventual need arise to leave Ember. The Builders decided that the citizens would eventually need to leave the city. The locked box is set to open in the year 220, but before it does, it gets lost in the back of a closet in Lina’s house, hidden away. Lina and Doon soon discover the importance of the document and set out to decipher the code and alert the citizens of Ember about their discovery.
An interesting note about this book is that it will be made into a film, which is set to come out in October of 2008. The movie will star Bill Murray, Tim Robbins and Mary Kay Place (of HBO’s “Big Love”). Lina and Doon will be played by Saoirse Ronan (“Atonement”) and British actor Harry Treadaway (“Control”). The actors seem to fit their parts in the books so far, except for Treadaway who will be a 23-year-old man playing a 12-year-old boy.
The scene in the book in which the generator fails should be interesting to watch.
In the book, the generator, on more than one occasion, breaks down, and the townspeople are left frozen in complete blackness. Director Gil Kenan will have a challenge in adapting those scenes to film.
Overall, the book is well worth the read for anyone.
The main characters are 12 years old, but Harry Potter was only 11 in the first book of that series. Besides, you can never be too old to be a child at heart.
