Attain Mister Pip Chronicled By Lloyd Jones In Brochure

a firm favourite can be salutary, a cure for that breathless overenthusiasm 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 thes 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, gutwrenching empathy with the main characters that gasp of recognition as the plot unfurls nailbiting 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 wellrounded 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 ayear old, but it slips through, it works, why ever not, Maybe it's the grownup 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.




Inevitable comparisons, . .

When an uprising on the small island of Bougainville, part of Papua New Guinea, leads to the school in Matildas village being left with no teacher, the one white man in the village, Mr Watts, takes on the role.
Unqualified, he decides to inspire the childrens imaginations by reading them a chapter of Great Expectations each day, He also invites the mothers of the village to come to class and impart nuggets of local wisdom, But the uprising is coming ever nearer and soon violence will sweep into the village, changing life for some of the characters irrevocably.
. .

This book was nominated for the Booker Prize in, Astonishing. I can only assume this was for the worthiness of the message rather than any literary merit, The message is simple: literature provides a means to interpret life and to escape from reality, Oh, and war is hell,

Ive said this before but clearly Mr Jones wasnt paying attention, If, when you start to write your novel, you decide to constantly remind your readers of one of the greatest writers of all time, youd better be sure your own writing will bear up to the inevitable comparisons.
Jones not only reminds us of Great Expectations, he spends much of his book recounting large swathes of that one in grossly simplified terms.
Even although Great Expectations is one of my least favourite Dickens novels, I spent most of my time wishing I was reading it rather than this.
Where Dickens is marvellously imaginative, Jones is not, Where Dickens uses language with a lush extravagance, Jones does not, Where Dickens creates characters who, although exaggerated, contain an essential truth, Jones does not,

Not content with reminding us of Dickens, Mister Pip has many of the elements of the Dead Poets Society running through it too the teacher who opens his pupils minds to a new way of thinking through unconventional teaching methods.
I always found that film mawkish, and Mr Watts comes over as no more credible than the Robin Williams character, Heart Of Darkness pops up too in a rather odd way since the book is written from the perspective of Matilda, one of the native islanders, it struck me as clumsily colonial that the most important, most influential character should be the one white man.


Im really not a believer in the write what you know school of thought, I believe all authors should be allowed to imagine themselves into different genders, races, cultures, ages, etc, if they choose. I prefer to say you should know what you write that is, do your research, get beneath the skin of your characters, make them speak and think and act as they would rather than as you would.
So in principle I have no problem with a middleaged white man writing in the voice of a teenage black girl from an entirely different culture to his own.
However, I never for one moment felt that the voice of Matilda rang true, In Great Expectations, Dickens writes as Pip, but tells us about his childhood in retrospect using an adult voice.
Jones cant seem to make up his mind sometimes Matildas voice is clearly that of an educated adult looking back, but sometimes he tries to create a teenage voice for her and fails badly by allowing her to be aware of things her life experience would not have revealed to her at that time.


There were so many things that annoyed me about this, Matilda mentions her blackness about a million times, leaving me to wonder if black people living in almost exclusively black communities with little or no contact with the outside world really talk about their black arms, black skin, black feet, all the time.
As a white child growing up in an exclusively white community, I certainly have no recollection of ever thinking of myself as white.
Every time Matilda reminded me that she was black, it had the odd effect of reminding me that the author was white he seemed more fascinated by Matildas skin colour than I could believe she ever would have been.
I remember reading somewhere Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie saying that she never thought of herself as black until she went to live in America.


Then theres the stuff Jones doesnt explain, and the bits were presumably supposed to accept without thinking through how unrealistic they are.
Matilda acts as interpreter at points between Mr Watts and various Papuans, How did this teenage girl who has never left her village and who has had a basic education at the local school acquire this ability Why her, rather than any of the other kids who grew up alongside her She finds it hard to explain the meaning of black shoe polish to the villagers but oddly has no difficulty with the concept of the coats of parking attendants.


Pah! Enough! The story itself is fine a straightforward account of the devastating effects of living through a brutal war.
It therefore has some graphically violent scenes which some readers may find disturbing although, given the context, I didnt feel they were inappropriate or overdone.
If anything, I felt he copped out in the end, choosing to avoid the worst brutality at the expense of realism.
But overall, I found little to admire in this one and find it hard to recommend,

sitelinkwww. fictionfanblog. wordpress. com There are some books that actually make you feel like you are a better person for having read it.
This is one of those books,



Mister Pip is the comingofage story of Matilda, a teenager living in New Guinea during the height of civil war in the earlys.
Her two greatest influences are her mother and a selfappointed teacher Mr, Watts. The foil between the mother and Watts helps Matilda reveal an authentic, independent self after she watches the two struggle over ideas purported through religion and literature.
Matilda is forced to think for herself and begins to see the world not in terms of black and white but in nuanced shades of color.




At times sweet and sentimental and others harsh and terrifying, the author Lloyd James does an amazing job of weaving this novel together, especially through the thread of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, which Mr.
Watts uses to teach the island children, Any book lover will appreciate the way Watts harnesses the imagination of youth in a fantastic world and influences them to learn more about life than they ever could on their own.




Simply

brilliant, . .



I bought this book solely because I liked its cover, And it was shortlisted for Man Booker in, 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 postcolonial 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 doesnt 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 badlyst 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 ofyears old Matilda, one of the local girls, uuuuu, it just sucked.
Author forced me to watch through her eyes, and I was really empatheticless :, But put like this, I was just annoyed, picture bad,

I couldnt relate with her in any possible way, In no way. I couldnt 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 hes the author, but, its 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 firstpages, And then lastcame. 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 hadpages 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 its not a happy book, but I smiled because I finally understood Matilda, And that is soothing. .