“You cannot pretend to read a book. Your eyes will give you away. So will your breathing. A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe. The house can catch alight and a reader deep in a book will not look up until the wallpaper is in flames.”This lovely (and so true) quote is from “Mister Pip”, Winner of the 2007 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and Shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize written by Mr. Lloyd Jones.If Pip sounds familiar to you that you’ve probably read “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens and coincidence is surely not accidental. I must admit I’m not in that group as I haven’t read Mr. Dickens’ novel and at first I was afraid that will have an impact on reading (and fully understanding) this novel however I was wrong. I might even shamefully admit that not knowing story of Disken’s Pip was actually advantage so that I could easily jump in the shoes of (barefoot!) Matilda, our 13 year old narrator.The plot is settled on tropical island Bougainville, Papua New Guinea during civilian war which is approaching to the part of the island where they are. Central character of the novel is a teacher who is named Mr. Watts, Bougainville’s only white resident. As a consequence of the war the live on the island’s village is changing and one of the greatest change for our young narrator is that the schools is closed since the teacher has left the island. Until one morning Matilda’s mother yelled one morning “Get up Matilda! You’ve got school today!” since Mr. Watts decided to help the village and children by taking the role of the school teacher. At the very beginning he admits that he’s no educated to be a teacher and that there’ll be questions on which he will not be able to give answers but he promises that he’ll do his best to be good teacher. Since there is no formal education to be had, he improvises the curriculum that comes most easily to him: with “Great Expectations”, which, incidentally, is the greatest novel by the greatest English writer of the nineteenth century, Charles Dickens” and he starts reading one chapter per day feeding children’s hungry imagination and giving them a ticket into another world, so different than the one they live in.As the students’ interest mounts, so do their parents’ misconceptions. Told of the new importance of a Mr. Dickens on the island, the parents send in requests that Mr. Dickens procure antimalaria tablets, generator fuel, beer, wax candles and so on.Eventually parents decided to give their contribution to the education of their children. So we can be thought that “trust crabs first and above all others” or “to kill an octopus, bite it above the eyes” and so on but of course this can’t last forever, especially not on the island where is raging civilian war. Under this circumstance the impact of “Great Expectations” on the life of children (Matilda) is even greater: it gives her a shelter because “Stories have a job to do. They can’t just lie around like lazybone dogs. They have to teach you something.”And I’m afraid this is the place where book is lessening its impact because the dramatic events weren't dramatic whatsoever. I don’t know why; maybe that ascetic narration was precisely what Mr. Jones wanted avoiding by it all possible melodramatic elements. However for me it was just too fast and too flat.As I said the plot is settled on the tropical island in South Pacific but the story is universal, the only local spice might be the stories about crabs and octopuses and when I said that I don’t mean in negative way. Dicken's novel introduces the life in Victorian England to Matilda, while Jones' novel introduces me the life on Bougainville during the civil conflicts and I would love that I could say that this is world removed from me as much as Victorian England is removed from Matilda. However I am familiar with the horrors of civilian war and that might be the reason why geography is irrelevant with “Mister Pip”. This is story about life on some remote island, it’s not about broken families and lost of the love ones; it’s not even about horrors of war … “Mister Pip” is “a love song to the power of the imagination and of storytelling. It shows how books can change lives.”
I bought this book solely because I liked its cover. And it was shortlisted for Man Booker in 2007. So I thought it was good. I mean, the only thing that I liked, was this whole general idea. About native people living on this exotic post-colonial island which is struck by civil war between the rebels and redskin army with their helicopters flying above the palm trees, and how white world doesn’t give a shit, and relations among the villagers and their relations with the war situation and everyday domestic things. And the only white person on the island is Mr. Watts, called Mr. Pip, who is really no teacher at all, but is the only one who is capable to teach local children. So, he gives them life lessons from the only book on the island, Great Expectations. Ok. Not a cliché. God Save the Queen. The thing that I really disliked was how badly 1st person narration was written. So, this is why I say, whole general idea was really good – it had huge potential, but when I read it through the eyes of 14 years old Matilda, one of the local girls, uuuuu, it just sucked. Author forced me to watch through her eyes, and I was really empathetic-less :). But put like this, I was just annoyed, picture bad. I couldn’t relate with her in any possible way. In no way. I couldn’t picture her being this poor native girl, because some of her thoughts were completely westernised. She made many assumptions but they were not very well interpreted. Most of the times I was just convincing myself to finish it – because I was reading Lloyd Jones' words, which is fair enough because he’s the author, but, it’s just that, his words, not some blimmin' Matlida's words. The language was simple and quite likeable (which is contradiction to everything above), but I had such strong and bad shifts from Dickens’ white England to this oceanic island that it made me pretty angry overall. Because I so hoped it would be good. It never did. That was my impression of the first 150 pages. And then last 50 came. And my opinion changed. My thoughts about Matilda changed completely. It was like I was reading a different book. That annoyance from the beginning toward narration, plot, people, book, Mr. Watts ... that disappeared. Not completely, because I still had 150 pages behind me, but...Another perspective was given. Why is it like this?, found its answer. I was surprised and eventually closed the book with a smile. Not really a happy one, because it’s not a happy book, but I smiled because I finally understood Matilda. And that is soothing.
What do You think about Mister Pip (2007)?
What is the matter with you folks? Didn't you finish the book? The story is not being written by a 13 year old girl, it's being written by an adult Mathilda who is working on her PHD dissertation on Dickens's Orphans. A person she has grown up to be because of the love and sacrifice of Mr. Watts.
—Greg
I guess it was a good book, at the end it was kind of gruesome though, and it was also a bit detached about death. I mean people died and it didn't seem to really affect people that much, like it wasn't a big deal.But I did enjoy reading about someone's perspective on Charles Dickens. It gave insight to how people feel about him and how it affected their lives and their values.Mr Watts was a brave character and very complex, hiding secrets and wanting to be a good role model for the children on the island. I felt sorry for Daniel at the end and also for Matilda's mum. Somehow, I think the end waffled on a bit and probably wasn't necessary, it would have been fine to leave it 6 chapters earlier, because it sounded waffle-y and rushed. I also found grammatical errors which were a bit annoying at some points, but the general idea of the story was good.
—Renée
Re-reading a firm favourite can be salutary, a cure for that breathless over-enthusiasm that marked the initial reaction. I'm not sure if anything can recapture the emotional punch in the solar plexus this book gave me the first time round. Appalled outrage at the fact that the civil war in the 1990s on the island of Bougainville which blasts devastation through the narrator's life was barely reported in any Western media; shocked horror at the atrocities (all based on fact); painful, gut-wrenching empathy with the main characters; that gasp of recognition as the plot unfurls; nail-biting concern for the fate of Matilda; deep tenderness and appreciation for a whole book dedicated to the power of narrative; joy at those few funny or uplifting moments; satisfaction at a well-rounded finish.A second read will usually reveal the stitching, it is rarely the same seamless slide. It can be like seeing the winches, pulleys and traps that are necessary to create a stage illusion, either your admiration for the cunning construction is confirmed, or you're left wondering how you ever fell for it.Or can it be a bit of both? What carries this novel is that absolutely convincing voice. That deceptively simple voice. Straightforward, unsentimental, modest, unsophisticated. Short, easy sentences in plain English. So easy to read that it's easy to overlook the pulleys and ropes. The narrator, Matilda, has a wondrous eye for the telling detail: how it's only the dogs and chickens that have names that hide from the helicopters with the people in the jungle. She reads body language, she sees her mother: When she dug in her heels all her heft raced to the surface of her skin. It was almost as if there were friction between her skin and the trailing air. Hardly the language of a 13 year old, but it slips through, it works, why ever not. Maybe it's the grown-up Matilda talking there.The plot is beautifully worked. What at first seems to risk turning into cliché, the transformative power of an inspirational teacher à la Mr Chips or Mr Keating is first undermined and then complicated, turning into a Shakespearian tussle with guilt, revenge and redemption. One slight caveat: it founders a little after the shock of the worst atrocities. Matilda has to get out, how that is managed is just a little messy and wet and reminiscent of The Mill on the Floss. But that was my only quibble, not enough to really detract from the sum.What I did notice this time was that occasionally it got a bit preachy. Some of the Big Themes were flagged up a little too obviously, a bit too clearly signposted. It's not going to be one of those where you can discover more and more: it's all there on the surface for you, ready to pick up like a shell from the beach. That's fine: it is a wondrous thing of beauty with an iridescent, pearly sheen that will sit on your shelf and whisper to you again when you hold it to your ear.
—·Karen·
