Mister Pip | Lloyd Jones

Mister Pip | Lloyd Jones | an unusual find

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Mister Pip

	Mister Pip Lloyd Jones Dial Press Trade Paperback, 2008 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 54 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

In a novel that is at once intense, beautiful, and fablelike, Lloyd Jones weaves a transcendent story that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the power of narrative to transform our lives.

On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, where the teachers have fled with most everyone else, only one white man chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from Charles Dickens?s classic Great Expectations.

So begins this rare, original story about the abiding strength that imagination, once ignited, can provide. As artillery echoes in the mountains, thirteen-year-old Matilda and her peers are riveted by the adventures of a young orphan named Pip in a city called London, a city whose contours soon become more real than their own blighted landscape. As Mr. Watts says, ?A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe.? Soon come the rest of the villagers, initially threatened, finally inspired to share tales of their own that bring alive the rich mythology of their past. But in a ravaged place where even children are forced to live by their wits and daily survival is the only objective, imagination can be a dangerous thing.

From the Hardcover edition.

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Popeye

"Everyone called him Popeye." Thus begins Mister Pip, an eloquently written story about how profoundly literature can influence lives. As Popeye evolves into Mr. Pip, the personalities and character traits of the islanders also emerge. Mother and daughter, war and resistance, husband and wife, civilization and nature, life and death, black and white, nurturance and abandonment - these are dichotomies around which this novel plays out. Mister Pip is narrated by a young woman looking back upon her teen years on a remote Pacific island, who begins to come of age under the tutelage of the substitute school master. His true name is Mr. Watts, and he is the only white person on the island, having married one of its inhabitants. Every day, he reads part of Great Expectations to his mixed-age pupils, and the world opens up to each of them in a different way.

Dramatic, evocative, and filled with hope, sorrow, and a touch of mystery, Mister Pip has deservedly won numerous literary prizes. This is an important book with a timeless, unforgettable message.

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an unusual find

bought this book in New Zealand because it was shortlisted for a prize. found an amazing story that weaves together the challenges of life in the developing world with the power of literature to take us all beyond ourselves and allow us to construct new understandings.

Island fever

If there's one thing this book did for me it was a desire to read Great Expectations just because of the way the author uses it as an important prop for his island based story.
This was a mix of Lord of the Flies and Treasure Island though it remained a mystery right to the end. It's probably one of the most unusual books I have ever read but I liked it because it was a story told honestly with no frills and it was set in a part of the world among people I would not be familar with. This in itself attracted me to the book.
It certainly set the scene for me and I transported myself totally into the story and for the duration of the read I was on that island. It also reminded me of the Life of Pi for some reason.
You could just imagine a scenario where people are faced with moral decisions but the gruesome event towards the end of the book took me completely by surprise.
This was an unusual, easy read but a rich and rewarding experience.

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