Mister Pip
by Lloyd Jones
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Book Summary Information
Author: Lloyd JonesEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-05-20
ISBN: 0385341075
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback
Book Reviews of Mister Pip
Book Review: Pip of the Pacific
Summary: 4 Stars
Your first really good book is a bit like your first cigarette, your first drink, your first lover. It's an experience that lodges within you, one you keep coming back to, so deeply unique and personal you cannot share it on anything but the most superficial level. "Mister Pip" is at once a really good book itself, and a book about reading really good books.
Matilda is a teenage girl growing up on Bougainville, a large island North East of Australia, during the early 1990's. A war of independence against the rulers on the neighboring island of Papua New Guinea is in full swing, causing the entire white population and many of the black, including the local schoolteachers, to flee the island. Only one white man remains, a lonely eccentric named Mr. Watts, who begins to teach the children of Matilda's village by reading from Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations."
At first glance, there's not much common ground between Victorian England and a tropical island, but the story of Mister Pip, the hero of "Great Expectations" who rises from poverty to riches, strikes a chord with Matilda and the other children, and their own dreams of escape. "It was always a relief to return to Great Expectations," says Matilda. "It contained a world that was whole and made sense, unlike ours."
Fantasy is not always healthy of course, and reality, if shut out, has a way of kicking in the door. At first there is resistance from some of the more religious parents, including Matilda's mother, who feel the Bible is the only book worth reading. The not-quite-battle of words between Matilda's mum and Mr. Watts is a triumph of understatement, a subtle thing that swims beneath the surface of otherwise placid encounters. Later, the war intrudes, as you knew if must from the beginning, with sudden, deadly consequences for the entire village.
Anyone who has ever felt affected by great literature will find resonance in the story. "Mister Pip" is a slim little thing, almost waif-like, weighing in at a hair over 250 pages. No Dickensian language or convoluted phrasing here: there is an economy of words and emotion in Matilda's voice, which only underscores the horror as events go from bad to worse. Yet in the end the novel's message is one of hope, if tempered by a realistic awareness of the limitations of what fiction can accomplish.
Much could be made of white guilt in the setting of this novel, of the exploitation of Bougainville's copper mines, which leads to the rebellion, and of the backing provided to the Papua New Guinean government's efforts to crush it. Mr Jones acknowledges these issues, but never takes sides nor lets them overwhelm the main story.
You might also be forgiven for feeling there's something a bit too "Dances With Wolves" about the story of a white teaching a black village, but Mr Watts is never presented as a heroic or wise figure, someone at the mercy of events rather than their master. The character of Matilda helps illustrate the interplay between the two cultures, with her fascination of Dickens balanced against her love of folk tales and stories, proving there is something for both sides to gain from the exchange. "We feel white around black people," says Mr Watts, uncomfortable with the truth, only to be answered with "We feel black around white people."
I like the book, really I do--see the rating I gave it at the top of this review--but allow me to let my cynical side show for a moment. It must be said there's something a little self-serving about novelists writing novels that tell you how wonderful novels are--a bit too close to patting yourself on the back, that one.
Still, with a work this accomplished Mr Jones can probably be forgiven for patting himself on the back a little. I can't say I will always remember it--the title of first great book is already taken for me--but it is one I will certainly be in no rush to forget.
Summary of Mister Pip
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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