Jonas is eleven years old, and he has a sister named Lily. Each family unit in their Community has only two children as required by law, and everyone is color blind. There is no weather as we know it, nor hills or valleys. Music doesn't exist, and neither do emotions. There is no war, or hunger, or conflict. Instead, everything relies on Sameness, genetically-engineered conformity. (Though this doesn't always work out....some people have blue eyes, and his friend Fiona has red hair. "Life will find a way," as the characters in Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park and Lost World say.) He is looking forward to turning twelve, where the Elders will assign him the job he will work for the rest of his life.
He is assigned to be the new Receiver; the person tasked with living with all the known memories of things that once were - battles(we see flashbacks of the Civil War), pain, love and happiness. The previous Receiver, who Jonas calls "The Giver," wishes to train someone new to take over this burden of handling the weight of the world's experiences. Through this training, he becomes able to comprehend concepts like hunting, war, starvation and anger. Also, through a glimpse of a family gathering at Christmas, love.
This is a big problem, because his family unit has been taking care of an unnecessary baby named Gabe, who will soon have to be Released: killed by lethal injection and left alone to perish. And that can't happen. So Jonas and the Giver decide that he should escape; with the Giver staying behind to help the Community's citizens deal with the influx of memories that will wash over them once Jonas disappears. (The Giver knows this is needed because of the way the last Receiver-in-training reacted; she couldn't handle it and fell apart. The memories caused a large panic throughout the Community.)
Jonas and Gabe escape into the strangeness that is Elsewhere; eventually coming to hills, seeing things like trees, and experiencing coldness and snow. The ending is ambiguous; either they escape to the safety of a little village, or they die of hypothermia like Hans Christian Andersen's Little Match Girl.
There is a definite sense throughout the book that the current state of affairs is wrong, in some concrete, definable way. There isn't much detail given about how things got to this current state, but there is enough detail for the setting to feel believable. The third-person limited narration also feels authentic, and the tone is realistic, instead of being idealized like later dystopian-YA protagonists. .
