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story identification - Book about constant microphone surveillance and no colors



I read a book a few years back that I’m hoping someone can identify for me. These are the tidbits I remember:



  • Smallish community setting, near-future


  • Microphone surveillance in every room

  • Kids tossing a ball, one of them noticed the ball was "somehow different" (could identify the color red for the first time)

  • Kids being appointed jobs when they came of age except protagonist

  • Protagonist was skipped in job appointment ceremony, but was given special one-of-a-kind-job. Someone apologies to community and everyone responds "Apology accepted", which is sort of a cultural custom.

  • The elder who’s job the protagonist was replacing had great respect in the community and the inconceivable power to disable the microphone in his home


Any one know what book this is? I read it probably twelve years ago.



Answer



This sounds a lot like The Giver by Lois Lowry


From "The Giver", Wikipedia:




Jonas, who is 12, is apprehensive about the upcoming Ceremony of Twelve, where he will be assigned his career or his "assignment in the community". In his society, little privacy is allowed; even private houses have two-way intercoms which can be used to listen in for infractions of the rules. However, the rules appear to be readily accepted by all, including Jonas. So it is without real protest that he initially accepts his selection as the Receiver of Memory, a vocation he is told will be filled with pain and the training for which will isolate him from his family and friends forever.


Yet, under the guidance of the present Receiver, a surprisingly kind man who has the same rare, pale eyes as Jonas, the boy absorbs memories that induce for the first time feelings of true happiness and love. Also, for the first time, Jonas knows what it is to see a rainbow, and to experience snow and the thrill of riding a sled down a hill. But then he is given the painful memories: war, pain, death, and starvation.



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