The Hunger Games are gripping, frightening ... and make me ponder differences between generations

I have been a voracious reader since childhood. I don't actually remember learning to read, in fact, I just recall retreating to my bedroom as a very small girl, alone, with a stack of books. Classic only child syndrome, I suppose. I graduated quickly from picture-heavy books to the Chronicles of Narnia, the Wind in the Willows, Nancy Drew (the original 1940s books inherited from my aunt, in which Nancy drove a "roadster", wore "smart frocks" and never even kissed Ned Nickerson) and anything about classical mythology I could get my hands on. From there, I remember jumping pretty much straight into grown up fiction.

There was no phenomenon of "young adult literature" in the late '70s when I was in my early teens. Nor do I recall everyone reading the same thing in cult-like fan groups. We all had our own tastes, and, frankly, I don't remember sharing mine with many classmates. About half my reading was fantasy like The Lord of the Rings, the Shannara series and the Dragonriders of Pern books, common enough amongst the boys but a bit rare at my girls' convent school. The other half was detail-rich historical romances by people like Jean Plaidy and Victoria Holt. (Pen names for the same writer, it turned out, an amazingly prolific Englishwoman named Eleanor Hibbert.)

Now, of course, young adult literature is one of the hottest categories in publishing, with readership stretching up into the adult world. The phenomenon seems to have established itself with the Harry Potter series and flourished (at least amongst women) with the Twilight books. Next up: The Hunger Games. I'd been hearing about the last for at least a year. With strict instructions to stay immobile for a few weeks after surgery, my friend Hillary had the entire trilogy delivered to my door. Three days later, I'd finished the stack. "Powerful read", "fast paced" and "a gripping page turner" are all much-used cliches on back covers, but they're well applied to these books. But if these are books for teenagers, then they must leave any adult reader with one big impression: How times have changed.

Author Suzanne Collins mixes inspirations from Greek mythology, ancient Rome, modern politics and reality TV in her dystopian vision of the near future. North America has emerged from an horrific war into a ruthless dictatorship, ruled by The Capitol somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. Citizens here have a life of plenty and leisure, their primary concerns being fashion and entertainment. Their good life is provided by the labour of the people in the 12 Districts ... what's left of the United States ... now little more than gulags where slave labour produces whatever the Capitol needs. To make sure the Districts remember who's boss, and never forget the failed rebellion that destroyed the 13th District, they are each required to hold a lottery every year at which one girl and one boy between the ages of 12 and 18 are sent off to The Capitol as tributes, just as myths have young Atheneans going to the Minotaur. The 24 tributes are then given stylists and production crews, pampered and trained, then thrown into a 24-7 live broadcast reality show cum gladiatorial games, where there can be only one winner. The rest must die.

We follow our heroine Katniss Everdeen as she participates in the games and, through her natural teenage rebelliousness, becomes the catalyst that starts to unsettle the whole society. It's dark, violent, disturbing and utterly compelling. And it got me thinking: why are the books today's teens read so much more sinister than those I consumed 30 years ago?

On simple question of plot, I think it's because the "darkness" is so much closer to real life. Lord of the Rings baddie Sauron was pure evil, but was never going to make an appearance in the real world. No more than were the dragons, elves and magicians that populated most of the books I read. There were good guys and bad guys, the lines were solidly drawn and good always triumphs. Harry Potter draws a lot from that world, but arch villain Valdemort has gone bad because he was an abused child. Scary and potentially all too real. Valdemort's followers are all for racial genocide of the muggles, again fictionalisation of things readers will have seen on the news. The Twilight Vampires are good guys who've overcome their taste for blood, but we're still dealing with a frightening world of random violence and murder, while our main characters have some nasty emotional demons to deal with. The Hunger Games is scariest of all, because it creates a world that seems just a few steps away from what could really happen if humanity took some wrong turns. It brings a horror of the future that, I suspect, readers encountered when they first read 1984 or Brave New World.

As to the question of why today's teenagers are consuming this stuff rather than the simpler, happier-ending, clearer moral grounds of my youth ... now that's a tougher question. As an adult reader, they're simply great books, but I have no teenagers in my life to give the youth perspective. One assumes that it reflects the tougher, more honest world they've grown up in. One of greater moral ambiguity from the start, more violence, more skepticism. Maybe a purely good heroine, and an entirely evil bad guy, just won't fly with this gang. Or maybe it's the publishing phenomenon of upselling these books to adults in their millions; if the over-20s are going to buy them, they need a harder edge.

If I had a 12-year-old, would I want her reading The Hunger Games? Probably. But I'd want us to read them together. We'd have a hell of a lot to talk about as she worked her way through. And I'd expect a few nightmares. Who knows. Maybe the dark, rich complexity of today's teenage literature will produce a generation with both greater moral certainty, and a better understanding of the motivations and nuances of others. We'll have to wait and see.