At this time of year I think about the best books we’ve read in 2009, I find it hard to pin down to a few so my list is long, here goes: The spare room by Helen Garner; Heartsick by Chelsea Cain; Addition by Toni Jordan; A deadly business by Lenny Bartulin; Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones; Look me in the eye: my life with Aspergers by John Elder Robison; In the woods by Tana French; White Tiger by Aravind Adiga; Eat, pray, love by Elizabeth Gilbert; People of the book by Geraldine Brooks; Dewey: the small town library cat who touched the world by Vicki Myron; Away by Amy Bloom; Escape by Carolyn Jessop; The Guernsey literary and potato peel pie society by Mary Ann Shaffer.

Of these books, the ones that generated the best discussions were: Addition; Look me in the eye; The spare room; Mister Pip; In the woods; People of the book; Away; Eat, pray, love & Escape.

If you enjoyed The spare room try The household guide to dying by Debra Adelaide & Things I want my daughters to know by Elizabeth Noble. If you enjoyed Escape try The 19th wife by David Ebershoff & Under the banner of heaven by jon Krakauer, also Carolyn Jessops next book called Triumph will be published in May 2010. If you enjoyed People of the book definately read more by Geraldine Brooks such as March and Year of wonders, but also try Labyrinthe by Kate Mosse & The Medici secret by Michael White. Elizabeth Gilbert has a new book out called Committed : a skeptic makes peace with marriage, in which she continues her story, also the movie, Eat, Pray, Love, should be released around August 2010 starring Julia Roberts as Elizabeth Gilbert.

Above all though my favourite for the year has been The Guernsey Literary and potato peel pie society. I would recommend that everyone at least try it, this was a wonderful, hopeful & joyous read!

Praise and Five Pie Slices for   Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones, Dial Press 2006 Paperback 2008, 256 pages

Shortlisted for the BOOKER Prize.  Winner of the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize:  BEST BOOK AWARD

MOTIVATION for READING:    I signed up for the New Zealand Book Month Challenge and this was one book recommended.  I checked this out from the library.

WHAT it’s ABOUT:    When war comes to the island of Bouganville, one of the Solomon Islands in the 1990s, all the white people leave  and no one comes back except soldiers, by helicopter.    The villages are left to fend for themselves.     A young girl named Matilda, approximately 14 years old introduces the reader to the only white man to stay on the island.   This Mr. Watts, often called Pop-Eye, volunteers to continue operating the school and reads Great Expectations by Charles Dickens to the students.     Matilda escapes into the strange world of London, Dickens and Pip and learns a lot:   about people and life, love, and courage.

WHAT’s GOOD:   The narrator’s voice is wonderful.  The pacing of this careful and deliberate story pulls you in without you even noticing and then RIPS YOUR HEART OUT!    It has hope, loss, tenderness, tragedy and terrific story-telling.    I bawled hard;  in case you like to cry with a good story.

My THOUGHTs:   I really enjoyed this book!    One of my favorites this year so far.

Now, I am not sure I’ve read Great Expectations but I did enjoy the movie starring Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow.   I don’t think it necessary to know who Pip is and much about Dickens’ Great Expectations but I do believe that reading this first might add to an appreciation of it!     So maybe, I should add GE to my classics must-read list…

So many pretty covers, too:

Please enjoy these thorough and excellent reviews:

Chartroose’s Bloody Hell, It’s a Book Barrage!

Litlove’s Tales From the Reading Room

Chris’ Book-A-Rama

FIVE PIE SLICES of Two Crust Mango and Pineapple Pie with Coconut Sorbet!

If you need a good recommendation for a quick thoroughly satisfying story for the Read-A-Thon, Mister Pip is perfect.

Here is another worthwhile read for those who asked. It is Mister Pip by New Zealand author Lloyd Jones. The novel is set in a village on the Papua New Guinea island of Bougainville, during the 1990s civil war, and told by Matilda, a 13-year-old narrator, this story begins during a blockade. Only one white man remains, Mr Watts. He takes on the responsibility of the children’s teacher, instilling in them a love for his favourite book Great Expectations.

Lloyd Jones brings to life the transformative power of fiction and shows how an alternative world can become a reality. Reading and writing are confirmed as more than worthwhile activities – they are shown to be acts of survival, escape and rebirth, but can also cause conflict and fear.

Last time I wrote in this thing I was talking about books, in particular the ones I am currently reading/have recently read. Since then I’ve completed Woman’s World and Mister Pip. I enjoyed both and I thoroughly recommend Woman’s World especially. I don’t want to give anything away that might spoil potential readers’ enjoyment, but I think it works on several levels and would appeal to a good range of people. First there’s the cut-and-paste format (it took five years in total to produce – a labour of love!) which is unique and somehow involves you more, perhaps because of the chatty style of the magazines it was taken from, or the fact it resembles a ransom note… I don’t want to give the impression it’s gimmicky though – there is a plot lurking beneath with real depth and several twists and turns, which will hook you in. It is dark but funny at the same time, a combination I can rarely resist. I chuckled out loud on a good few occasions due to the cleverly chosen words in metaphors and the aforementioned little segues into advertisement:

It was just as well it was Saturday. He couldn’t have faced going into work. A glass of Lucozade might have helped. Lucozade is a very delightful way of giving Glucose, a rapid source of energy. It does not upset the most delicate stomach. Invalids take Lucozade willingly because it is so delicious and refreshing.

But there wasn’t any.

Meh, I knew any attempt at quoting wouldn’t do it justice … you need to see it to get the real effect. Also this isn’t meant to be some sort of English essay, sprinkling in my quotations like salt on my chips, as my AS level English teacher Nicola – herself a source of quirky metaphors – taught me to do. I was just impressed, and am now interested in getting my hands on Graham Rawle’s other creations. I had heard of the ‘Lost Consonants’ idea before (taking one consonant out of a sentence to completely change the meaning), and that was an invention of his, it appears.

I finished Mister Pip just earlier on, whilst baking in the heatwavey sun. It made less of an impression on me, and I would probably have got more out of it if I had actually read Great Expectations too, but I still liked it. The juxtaposition of two such different cultures and the way readers interpret texts so much in light of their own situation … which links very neatly to the big ‘writing about writing spiel’ that I will post here when I’ve edited it a little.

What I wanted to write about today, though, wasn’t about particular books, more about stories in general, and more specifically, their conclusions. This is a problem I’ve always had with writing, and it’s why I’ve never been any good at short stories. I understand some mini-stories don’t really have a structure as such, they are snippets – slices of life – whatever you wish to call them, as if you’re invited in for a while but life will go on afterwards and you’re left to muse on it all. I have personally always found it easier to think up characters, a situation, the general gist – but the ending…? When it came to the ‘Writing a Novel’ module at university, we only had to write the first few chapters, but we had to write a summary of the entire story, and I came to question the ending I decided on, thinking it something of an anticlimax. I couldn’t think of a better one though, one that was realistic and still felt moved on from the starting point.

I have to say that an awful lot of books I have read leave me with the impression that many authors are in the same boat. Maybe not for the same reasons as mine, but I can’t think of many book-endings that have really satisfied me as much as the book itself merited. It seems there’s either the formulaic ‘happy ending’ (probably most common in genre-fiction), there’s the ‘twist in the tail’ (which needs to be good, not ‘and then they woke up’), or there is the hasty attempt to wrap everything up, which doesn’t quite flow right somehow, or feels a bit forced. How much to tell? Should you leave it open-ended, or add an epilogue type thing? Oh, the decisions.

Even in books I enjoy, an iffy ending can put me off a little, as it is what you’re left with immediately after finishing. Final sentences must be the hardest to crack. I wonder why exactly it is so hard. Perhaps no one really likes to leave their story behind – they’ve grown attached to it, it’s difficult to let go and stop writing about those characters you know so well. Perhaps they’re sick of writing it and just want to finish it, but aren’t really sure the best way to do so. Perhaps endings are difficult at the best of times, if it’s the end of something you love (a relationship, a life, an era) and no one really thinks about how they’d handle these until they’re forced to deal somehow. That makes sense to me. On the other hand, as writer you are the God of your creation, and I expect some people relish the opportunity to decide exactly what happens and what hand to deal their little world. Hmm – ‘the end of the world’ – a bit of a doomy way to view the conclusion of a story! But I suppose technically, in a way, that is what it is. No wonder it’s daunting.

(This doesn’t consider the prospect of books with sequels, either. They still need to end neatly, but there’s less pressure as we’ll be hearing from everyone again. It’s a temporary pause.)

I know there are plenty of books with ‘good’ endings, and how ‘good’ it is or isn’t is up for debate anyway – what doesn’t work for one person may work for the next. Lots have fitting endings, I should say, that make sense and don’t leave you with any frustrated questions. But that’s not so interesting to talk about. I’m a natural rambler (Ramblor™) so I can well understand people not knowing when to stop and call it a day. I’m just interested in what goes through anyone’s mind when trying to wrap up a story. They say the first sentence is vital and should hook the reader from the start, but I’d suggest the final sentence is at least as important.

On that note, I am off to put food in me. As in DINNER, you perverts.

Based in Bougainville during the blockade, this story is just wonderful!  In this novel there are two stories, that of Mister Pip from Dickens’ Great expectations and that of Matilda as she learns that there is so much more beyond her island and discovers the power of her own imagination.  The characters are well drawn, very realistic and leave you wondering about life after the novel.  Don’t let the cover put you off, some members of my book club think this is the best book they’ve read all year!

This entry is dedicated to the books I have on the go, which is several, as my attention span isn’t fantastic.

Not technically on-the-go any more is The Romance of the Forest by Ann Radcliffe. It’s among five books I recently borrowed from my literate friend Andrea whose room has shelves above the pillow end of her bed that would scare me too much to sleep as they always threaten to overflow. Anyway, I wish I had read more old-school literature at university, but because my degree was joint, I could only choose a few English modules and I went for more recent works, thinking they would be quicker to read, but this was a mistake (have you tried reading Blood Meridian or Sophie’s Choice within a week?!). I’ve always been interested in history and enjoyed the Romantic lit I’d studied, even though it was kind of the original emo. I liked the values, anyway, and the idea of being out in wild untamed nature. I’ve also always loved to be frightened – ghost stories, scary films, wandering round weird places in the dark – I like the adrenaline rush. So it’s quite surprising I hadn’t really read any Gothic novels till recently. I was at Ryan’s house last summer and we watched the 2007 BBC adaptation of Northanger Abbey because he thought I would appreciate seeing another fresh innocent young thing named Catherine devouring such books and finding mystery and intrigue in everything. We couldn’t stop laughing because she really was me in some ways – I’m not so naive, but I probably was at seventeen. Though I’d like to think I was a better judge of character. Anyhoo, Ryan told me about The Monk, a scandalous book of the late 18th century and I subsequently skimmed it at the website I linked. Crikey! That monk is a thoroughly bad lot.

Back on topic though, The Romance of the Forest is typical of the genre – vast woodland and towering mountainscapes, abbey ruins, a persecuted damsel, a villainous Marquis, scary relics of someone murdered, and characters breaking into spontaneous sonnets and/or tears at the sight of a sunrise or a gambolling fawn. OK, those latter bits are quite ridiculous, but I suppose there needs to be some comic relief. It was much easier to digest than I’d expected, and I definitely enjoyed the intrigue and suspense. It’s hard not to roll your eyes at the cliches, such as the tragic but beautiful heroine everybody adores or mistreats, thunder at every ominous moment, all the secret passages – but it’s lots of fun to read, and made less cheesy by the 1790s turns of phrase which automatically seem more eloquent than today-speak. And there were quite a few plot twists at the end – which of course made for a convenient happy-ending scenario, but never mind. I can see how these books were considered the trashy pulp fictions of their time and appealed to imaginative teenagers such as Miss Morland. They appeal to me for the same reason – escapism and adventure, and DOOM! Although, I’d personally rather they were a little more saucy and graphic.

The second book of Andrea’s that I’m reading is called Mister Pip and is by Lloyd Jones. I’ve only just started reading this so I can’t tell you much about it yet, but it’s set on a remote island in the South Pacific called Bougainville, where war breaks out, the islanders are blockaded and the school is closed down. The hermit-like ‘Pop Eye’, the only white man on the island, re-opens the school and reads them Great Expectations. I’ve only got to the bit where he’s read them the first chapter but it sounds a really interesting premise – how the kids on an island far away interpret this work of fiction in the context of the turmoil in their lives. It’s always good to read about different cultures, and I like ‘reading about reading’. I’ll keep you posted.

The reason I’ve not read much of that yet is because last week Amazon emailed me with a recommendation and after reading the few reviews my interest was piqued and I ordered it (especially as the price had gone down a bit). It’s a graphic novel by Graham Rawle called Woman’s World. I received this through the post yesterday and immediately started reading it, so I think it’s going to be the one I finish before I get back to other material. It is one of those books with a quirky approach that makes it refreshingly different to read. It’s entirely composed of words, phrases, sentences and graphics from women’s magazines of the 1960s, cut up and rearranged to form a novel. The protagonist is a lady who lives her life by these magazines, the way a lady should, so there’s a lot of brilliant little advertising/grooming-advice sections which are very amusing, but that’s just part of it – it’s been chopped up properly and there is an actual plot. I’m up to page 39 and I wouldn’t want to spoil the story even if I did know more about it, but I’m sure I’ll plough my way through it and in my next book-related post, give more detail. I quickly got used to reading the cut-n-paste style, though at first it was a bit like reading an anonymous letter. I just love books with original ideas like this so if you also like that sort of thing, get yourself a copy. Incidentally this was recommended to me because I previously purchased A Humument, which I also very much enjoyed for its unique concept and would advise you to check out.

There are three other books I started reading some time ago but left for various reasons, which I may as well mention. I began If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino last October, I think! I probably got to about halfway through. I’m determined to finish what I’ve started but to be honest I’m more compelled by all the other books I’ve mentioned so I’m going to go through them first, unless I’m in a masochistic mood. It’s an interesting premise yes, but I feel like saying “OK, I got the point a few chapters ago, do we have to keep going through this?” I think this little snippet sums it up. You begin reading a book (every other chapter is in second-person perspective) but then you realise it’s not what you thought it was and the chapters alternate between the first chapter of a different book, then back to following your progress to work out what the hell you’re reading NOW and what ever happened to the rest of the book you had to start, etc. Very po-mo. It’s just so stop-starty, cos every time I think I’m getting into the story, it completely changes, and it’s damn frustrating. Has anyone read this all the way through?

I then picked up Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka (the name Kafka will always remind me of ‘That Fat Cat’ which I can’t find any links to, but was a book I had as a nipper with the titular cat being named Kafka). I couldn’t read it before bed as the giant insect gave me nightmares. Bbrrrrr. Pretty grim reading. I’ve read Metamorphosis itself but I’ve yet to read the other short stories; I like that I can dip in and out of them.

Finally, my nan got a free copy of Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, on the front of the Telegraph, a few months ago, and donated it to me. I did start to read it maybe in April but I haven’t got far into that either. Seems one of those depressing kind of books about dissatisfied people, and their American dreams, with much overanalysis of every social awkwardness and a feeling of being stuck in the rat race. Quite quick reading though so I’ll probably finish that at some point too.

So there. That’s what’s been going on in this chat. I know practically nobody reads this blog, but if anybody does, and wants to discuss or recommend me something, go ahead. I’m trying to keep up the reading habit (which I can sometimes fall out of), so as to keep inspired with more chance of writing something myself.

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A White Man Stuck in a Black World

“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 flame.”

Lloyd Jones’s Mister Pip does just this, captivate immediately, while delivering a fictional story portraying a very real world. Based during the early ‘90s Bougainville Conflict in Papua New Guinea, Mister Pip shows how one islands past colonization propels its citizens into an unstable future of suppression and war. The economic frustrations revolving around a copper mine leads to devastating conflicts and results in the complete closure of the island to the outside world. Black skinned Matilda, Mister Pip’s teenage narrator, tells about her life on the island during this time, with her mother Dolores, ‘substitute’ teacher Mr. Watts, and the Rebels and Redskin Soldiers.

When the island is evacuated of all other whites, Mr. Watts is the only white who chooses to stay behind with his wife Grace. After weeks of boredom Mr. Watts, also known as Pop Eye, decides to assume the role of teacher to the children. Mr. Watts’s personal method of educating is through the story Great Expectations his aim is to provide an escapism while teaching his pupils to be moral citizens of Bougainville, or in other words, gentlemen. Matilda at one point suggests that Mr. Watts’s intelligence is limited because he chooses to bring the mothers and kin of the students in to help educate each class. However, we eventually discover that Watts has respect of the culture of Bougainville; he lets the people of Bougainville teach the children the fundamentals of the island life. Furthermore, he portrays the white world of one that is not so much better than the one they are currently living in. Throughout Mister Pip this cultural sensitivity is reaffirmed by Mr. Watts’s humble disposition (and parallels Jones’s own experience in Bougainville as a journalist during the ‘90s). Unfortunately, Matilda’s mother Dolores does not see Mr. Watts’s intent and finds any way she can to refute his educating. This unfortunate vengeance escalates into a major conflict for the village and results in the death of two people, however ending in redemption of Dolores herself.

Mister Pip was winner of the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Best Book in 2007. Jones’s successes in his story are numerous: his writing style is fun, thought provoking and delivers profound statements you can’t help but reflect on like, “thanks to dreams, in the history of the galaxy the world has been reinvented more often than there are stars”. The traumatic events of Mister Pip show how writing and literature can allow one to escape or deal with the realities and affects of war. Jones invents a story that tells the secret of Bougainville, but one that is sadly recognizable. The ending of Mister Pip seems to lack the fluidity and entertainment that his early chapters give. However, how does one end a mid-life tragedy? Overall Mister Pip is an enjoyable and educational read.

by Joey Davis

“Everyone called him Pop Eye.” However, this character named Mr. Watts, who would also come to call himself Mr. Pip, was far more than the young children in a small Bougainville village could even begin to imagine.  Mister Pip is a brilliant novel that portrays a crucial growing period of a young girl named Matilda in a small island village, and shows how her life was so profoundly changed and influenced by an old white man who had volunteered to teach in times of conflict.

Much to the enjoyment of the village children, Mr. Watts takes it upon himself to teach about Charles Dickens and his famous novel, Great Expectations.  Contrary to the reaction shown by Matilda’s very religious mother, this lesson plan is met with such appreciation and positive reception from the young children because in a sense it enables them to escape the hardships taking place around them.

This novel carries a theme of isolation that is portrayed in various ways.  The village itself is isolated because of a blockade and civil conflict, and this isolation disables the villagers from escaping to a safer environment.  At the same time, we see a kind of self-imposed isolation on the part of the young children, and especially Matilda.  Mr. Watts has opened a door into a world far different than the one the children are faced with in their lives, and Matilda finds this so exciting that she almost imagines Dickens’ characters into life, especially Pip.

This novel provides overwhelming sadness and emotion and counters it with the sense of hope and happiness discovered through the story of Pip in Great Expectations. However, a lesson is learned through Matilda’s escapism, and that is that the place for embellishment “belongs to life – not to literature.”

Situated on the war-torn island of Bougainville in the South Pacific, Lloyd Jones’ novel “Mister Pip” finds the reader experiencing life through the eyes of thirteen year old Matilda. Due to the tumultuous political climate, all teachers and foreign dignitaries have fled from the island, save one, the mysterious white man commonly referred to by the villagers as Pop Eye, aka, Mr. Watts. Being one of the few remaining people with an education, by default, Mr. Watts takes on the task of being the village school teacher. It is through Mr. Watts that Matilda comes to meet a certain Mr. Dickens, more commonly known as seventeenth century author, Charles Dickens. Every class, Mr. Watts reads a chapter from the novel “Great Expectations” out loud to the class, transporting Matilda away from the horrible realities of her real life to Victorian England, where she immerses herself in the adventures of her new found friend, Mr. Pip (to whom the title of the novel not-so-subtly alludes).
As indicated in the opening sentence of this review, readers are implored both implicitly and explicitly to actively participate in experiencing the novel. As Mr. Watts says, “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 is truly the case with “Mister Pip”. Presented through the perspective of the protagonist, readers will find themselves thrown heart, mind and body into the novel. Even the most learned adult will find their minds temporarily clear of over-intellectualized worries and completely engrossed in the stark realities of life in Bougainville being expressed with childlike honesty through the narrative voice of Matilda.
As far as the title is concerned, it is safest that one does not approach “Mister Pip” with great expectations. While the novel is brilliant in its own right, the allusion to Charles Dickens’ work in the title may cause readers to pick up “Mister Pip” with the wrong predispositions. Jones’ writing is very stark and plain compared to that of Dickens, but it is this simplicity that allows it to be so effective in communicating the author’s intended message. Sometimes, omitting details expresses them more strongly than dwelling on them.
I would suggest “Mister Pip” for anyone from eighth grade to eighty years of age. While the subject matter would perhaps be too heavy and complex for a younger audience, the clear, succinct writing and engaging literary voice would make this novel an enthralling and enriching experience for readers of all ages. To conclude, as Mr. Watts said, “The truest thing I can tell you is that whatever we have between us is all we’ve got. Oh, and of course Mr. Dickens.”

Bibliography

Jones, Lloyd. Mister Pip. Toronto: Random House, 2007.

by Jennie MacPhee

Lloyd Jones’ acclaimed novel Mister Pip is a captivating story full of emotion set in a quiet and nearly abandoned island in the South Pacific.  Written as a first-person narrative, a young girl named Matilda leads the reader through her life on the island that has been shattered by war and the dangerous consequences of childhood imagination.

Matilda is one of the few citizens to remain at her home while all of the school teachers and  most of the families have fled.  One man who chooses to stay behind is the mysterious and eccentric Mr. Watts, who happens to be the only white person on the island.  He opens up the schoolhouse and volunteers to teach the children, and the only lesson he has to offer is reading his copy of Great Expectations by Mr. Dickens.  As the children, quickly followed by the entire village, become enthralled by a young character named Pip, the novel begins to delve into the human conditions of imagination and obsession.  As we explore these conditions through the island people, we see that Jones is also presenting several difficult moral situations for us to consider.  Their imaginations grow wild as they dream of a bigger, more fulfilling world outside their own.  But during a time and place where daily survival is the only objective and there is little time for fun and games, we are reminded that sometimes imagination, even for children, can come with very dangerous consequences.

Although the life of a teenage girl is being told by a 50-something year old male, Lloyd Jones writes in a style that is believable and compelling.  The way in which Jones describes how Western culture has and continues to affect indigenous cultures makes Mister Pip a very convincing story.  It is sometimes easy to forget that this is a novel and not a personal memoir.  However, the simplicity of how he describes the atrocities that take place, including the murders of Mr. Watts and Matilda’s mother is more than an understatement.

Mister Pip
Lloyd Jones
M. Lafon

Histoire (résumé des éditeurs)
Depuis l’arrivée des soldats sur l’île [...], il ne reste qu’un seul Blanc dans le village où habite la jeune Matilda. Il s’appelle M. Watts, porte un nez de clown, promène sa femme dans un chariot et s’improvise maître d’école. Chaque leçon commence par la lecture à voix haute d’un chapitre des Grandes Espérances, écrit par l’un de ses amis, M. Dickens.
Alors que les échanges de tirs résonnent dans les montagnes, Matilda et ses camarades se passionnent pour les aventures vieilles d’un siècle d’un petit orphelin surnommé Pip, dans une ville appelée Londres, dont les contours leur semblent bientôt plus réels que leur région à feu et à sang. À leur tour, quelques adultes du village poussent la porte de l’école et viennent raconter leurs propres histoires, pour transmettre aux enfants la sagesse des anciens. Mais dans une île ravagée par la guerre, l’imagination ne protège pas toujours de la folie des hommes.

Revue de presse :
Mister Pip met en scène et en abyme, de façon subtile mais vertigineuse, l’empathie narrative. L’auteur, homme blanc dans la cinquantaine, se glisse dans la peau d’une fillette noire de 13 ans, qui se glisse dans la peau du héros d’un roman écrit cent cinquante ans plus tôt à l’autre bout de la planète – et nous, lecteurs, nous glissons à notre tour dans la peau des enfants éberlués, des parents affolés, des rebelles aux abois et, surtout, de ce magnifique désespéré qu’est M. Watts. Lloyd Jones nous offre là non seulement une histoire palpitante, vive, sensuelle, colorée, humaine, dans laquelle la tendresse la plus poignante alterne avec la violence la plus extrême (la lecture de certaines pages est suffocante) – mais aussi, en toute humilité, une leçon magistrale, à méditer par tous les professeurs de littérature à travers le monde. Le roman, nous rappelle-t-il encore et encore, nous donne la permission de changer notre vie.

Avis personnel
Mister Pip est un roman qui a réussi non seulement à me tenir en haleine et à me faire parler de lui, mais également à me laisser totalement hébétée à la fin, si bien que j’ai décidé d’en faire une petite présentation.
Lorsque je l’ai ouvert et, jusqu’à mi-parcours, je me disais : « mais pourquoi est-ce qu’on ne l’a pas mis en jeunesse/ado à la bib ? ». C’était, selon moi, un excellent bouquin pour ado et je trouvais dommage qu’on le cache en secteur adulte. Et puis, finalement, après, j’ai compris que l’histoire était universelle et surtout très violente. Thème oblige, la violence est présente dès le début de l’histoire. Elle est là, on en a conscience de loin en loin, mais elle reste presque aseptisée et effacée devant la relation que noue l’héroïne avec Pip, le héros des Grandes espérances, mais également avec M. Watts et puis, au détour d’une âge, elle vous explose à la gueule et vous laisse sans voix. On réalise alors qu’on a eu tant de plaisir à suivre Matilda, son quotidien et son introduction à la magie de l’écriture que l’on en a oublié la guerre et toute son horreur.
J’ai, personnellement, été prise à la gorge.
Le livre est donc beau, par bien des aspects. Il décrit un apprentissage de la lecture et de l’imaginaire tout en étant sans cesse susceptible de basculer dans l’horreur. Cette hésitation constante est très très bien gérée.
Je pensais aussi qu’il était presque nécessaire d’avoir lu un peu de Dickens pour comprendre toute la portée de l’ouvrage, mais en fait… non. Ce n’est pas du tout nécessaire. Comme je l’ai dit, l’histoire est universelle et l’on s’aperçoit que celle des grandes espérances l’est tout autant.

Note : 8,5/10

Lloyd Jones, 2007, 272 p.

I can see why Mister Pip won Australia’s Commonwealth Writer’s Prize in 2007 (and was shortlisted for the Booker).  This little novel is a beauty, and I was mesmerized from beginning to end.  One of the things I loved most about Mister Pip was its historical context.  Lloyd Jones wrote about an event I had never paid any attention to at all:  the blockade of Bougainville island by Papua New Guinea during the early 1990’s.  The story is about those who were left behind after Bougainville’s more prominent citizens fled to the safety of Australia and New Zealand.  While I was reading, my ignorance saddened me.  Many horrible and terrifying events have occurred all over this planet and I know almost nothing about them.  I think Americans are notoriously undereducated about the world, don’t you?  I don’t know how to fix this for everyone, but I do know how to fix it for myself:  I’ll read more novels like Mister Pip!

The novel is narrated by a young woman named Matilda, who recounts that awful time in the island’s history when almost everyone is gone and all that are left are native women and children and a few rebels fighting off in the distance.  Her village does have one white inhabitant–a bug-eyed gentleman named Mr. Watts.  Now that eveything has settled down a bit, Mr. Watts agrees to start up the school again, and, for want of any educational materials, he begins reading (and teaching) Great Expectations.

The students love the novel, even though they have no real understanding of the world inhabited by Dicken’s characters.  When the novel disappears, Mr. Watts asks them to recount Great Expectations in their own words, so they begin to retell it from their perspective.  The war eventually comes to their village and terrible tragedies occur, but Matilda never forgets Mr. Watts and how he made the world of Dickens become an essential part of village life.  Great Expectations instilled such a sense of wonder and curiousity in Matilda that she grew up to be a well-educated and successful adult. 

The marvelous thing about this novel is that it has so many layers, and as you peel them back, you begin to find more and more hidden meanings underneath.  I don’t think I’ve read a book with so much symbolism since my college days, when I wrote a paper on the underlying religiousity of The Old Man and the Sea.  On the surface, Mister Pip is a coming-of-age tale about a terrible time in a young girl’s life.  If you dig a little deeper, the novel is about jealousy, racism, isolation and ignorance.  If you get all the way down into the guts of the story, you find that Jones is also talking about the capability of storytelling to create and destroy, just as man does.  We procreate and we murder.  We build beautiful monuments, but we destroy nature in the process.  We build beautiful stories, but they in turn destroy the truth.  And what is truth anyway?  Every truth is a fiction, isn’t it?

This novel should be taught in schools.  It, along with other classics, like Lord of the Flies, should be taught to teens.  I think they’d really appreciate it.

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If I’m enthralled with a novel, I often feel the need to look up its setting or history.  For Mister Pip, I looked up some general information on Bougainville island.  Here are some pictures of the people and the place:

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Do you notice the proximity to Guadalcanal?  The Japanese and the Americans fought on Bougainville’s soil during WWII as well.

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                   Bougainville Revolutionary Army Guerillas

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Commonwealth Writers Prize nominations

This year’s Commonwealth Writers Prize is being hosted here in New Zealand.  In 2007 Kiwi author Lloyd Jones’ Mister Pip won.  The New Zealand authors who feature in the shortlist are Paula Morris for Forbidden Cities (Best book), Mo Zhi Hong for the young adult novel The year of the Shanghai shark and Bridget van de Zijpp for Misconduct (both nominated in the Best First Book category). The award winners will be announced in May as part of the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival.

Out of all the books I’ve read this year, there were two that affected me deeply. One of them is Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones, which I reviewed here.

The other, is a book that I am reading now, True Notebooks by Mark Salzman. I will be posting the review tomorrow to kick-off the new year but it’s a book that I had pre-conceived notions about, and realized very early on that I was incorrect in my thinking. It has changed my opinions on juvenile correctional facilities and has touched me in a way that is completely unexpected. I look forward to sharing it with you.

That said, have a wonderful and safe New Year’s Eve. I look forward to another great year of reading!

Dette er en fantastisk bok! Matilda bor sammen med sin mor i en liten landsby på en stillehavsøy. Det er borgerkrig, skolen har stengt fordi lærerne har flyktet og landsbyens eneste hvite mann bestemmer seg for å ta over som lærer. Mr. Watts er gift med en gal innfødt kvinne, og han pleier å trekke henne rundt i landsbyen i en kjerre, mens han har på seg en rød klovnenese. Mr. Watts måte å undervise på, er å lese fra “Store forventninger”. Det er utrolig hvordan historien fra 1800-talls London kan relatere til livet for et barn på en tropisk øy. Matilda lever seg til de grader inn i historien, at når hun faller i elva, så kaller hun tømmerstokken hun klamrer seg til “Mr. Jaggers”. Den er jo en redningsmann… Jeg skal ikke avsløre mer av historien, tror jeg, men jeg kan si at den røde klovnenesen og kjerren får sin forklaring til slutt.

“Mister Pip” handler om mye som er vanskelig å beskrive, men det er en glimrende bok! Også jeg levde meg inn i historien om Pip, og nå tror jeg at jeg må lese “Store forventninger” én gang til.

Hvis jeg skal komme med en innvending, så måtte det vært at avslutningen er litt for lang. Jeg synes godt at boken kunne sluttet etter at Mr. Watts fortid er blitt avslørt. Slik som den er nå blir avslutningen for langtrukken, og dermed også kraftløs.

My book club’s pick for August is Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones. Here is the blurb from Barnes and Noble:

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.

The story takes place on the island of Bougainville during its 1990 struggle for independence. I did not know anything about Bougainville prior to reading this novel but Jones paints a very surreal picture as far as the island itself. The word that came to mind while reading the novel is “dreamlike” even though there is a violent element running throughout the book, there are distinct moments of feeling as if you are in a dream or a nightmare depending on how you look at it.

At their first gathering, Mr. Watts takes out a copy of Great Expectations and begins to read passages to them. His intent is to introduce them to Mr. Dickens and that is just what he does. As the days pass and they get deeper into the book, Matilda, one of his pupils begins to talk about the book with her Mum back at their hut. Her Mum begins to question what is being taught to these kids and questions why specific parts of the book have not been removed.

I can’t say much more without giving some of the story away, but the story begins to examine what is fiction and what is not and how interwoven their lives are with the lives contained between the pages of Great Expectations. Lloyd does a fantastic job of leading you along and lulling you into a sense of calm, only to shake you up and create visuals that you just cannot get out of your mind.

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
Amazon synopsis:
‘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.’ Bougainville. 1991. A small village on a lush tropical island in the South Pacific. Eighty-six days have passed since Matilda’s last day of school as, quietly, war is encroaching from the other end of the island. When the villagers’ safe, predictable lives come to a halt, Bougainville’s children are surprised to find the island’s only white man, a recluse, re-opening the school. Pop Eye, aka Mr Watts, explains he will introduce the children to Mr Dickens. Matilda and the others think a foreigner is coming to the island and prepare a list of much needed items. They are shocked to discover their acquaintance with Mr Dickens will be through Mr Watts’ inspiring reading of Great Expectations. But on an island at war, the power of fiction has dangerous consequences. Imagination and beliefs are challenged by guns.Mister Pip is an unforgettable tale of survival by story; a dazzling piece of writing that lives long in the mind after the last page is finished.

I found this to be an incredible book. I loved it from the first page. Jones touches on the issues of race and civil war. It was interesting watching the battle between Mr. Watts and his book Great Expectations and Matilda’s mum and her Bible. Jones wrote this so well, expressing the naivety of the islanders in a sensitive manner.

There are some heart breaking moments throughout the book which actually added to the magic of the book as it drew you in more.

My favourite character was Mr. Watts, even after his ex-wife’s story. He was sensitive and brave. He stood out for being the only white man in the village but that didn’t seem to faze him at all. He stood up and was counted, and I liked that in him.

8/10 - a good read

A few days ago I bought 3 for 2 books at Waterstone’s in Canterbury because I knew I would be bored on the train and I’m very happy with the books–I have finished 2 of them–Mister Pip (shortlisted for 2007 Booker Prize) and The End of Mr. Y. Both of them are related to Victorians–Mister Pip is about how Charles Dickens and Great Expectations changed a PNG girl’s life;  Mr. Y is related to a Victorian novelist/scientist and time travel. The protagonist is a PhD student in English literature who discovers a rare book by this author in a secondhand bookshop and how this book alters her life. It is quite complicated but a page-turner for sure. The only thing I didn’t like was the edges of the book were black which made my hands dirty.
The third book is also about books and is called The Book Thief  which is set during WWII Germany. It’s pretty good so far…

Toujours à la recherche d’un roman exceptionnel, je scrute les tables de ma librairie préférée. Après avoir reposé plusieurs livres qui ne m’ont pas convaincue, je prends en main  Mister Pip de Lloyd Jones (Michel Lafon). Première accroche, le bandeau rouge du livre où est inscrit un commentaire de Nancy Huston : « Je ne connais aucun livre qui montre de façon aussi jubilatoire et inattendue la puissance que peut exercer la littérature sur notre vie. ». Je retourne le livre et une déclaration d’Isabel Allende me saute aux yeux : « L’un des meilleurs livres de l’année ! Poétique, bouleversant, surprenant…Le pouvoir des contes, l’imagination, le courage, la beauté, la mémoire, confrontés à l’irruption de la violence, sont au cœur de cet extraordinaire roman. » Bien sûr, face à de telles louanges, je n’ai pas résisté et je ne le regrette pas, ce roman est vraiment magnifique.

L’histoire se déroule dans une île du Pacifique nommée Bougainville. Une guerre éclate et transforme ce paradis en prison où la terreur et la mort rôdent parmi les habitants. Matilda et les autres enfants du village vont découvrir la littérature grâce au seul « blanc » resté sur place, Mr Watts dit Bel Œil. Chaque jour, il leur lira un chapitre d’un roman de C. Dickens « Les grandes espérances ». Les aventures Londonienne de Pip, le héros, leur permettra grâce au pouvoir des mots et à leur imagination, de s’évader de leur quotidien si tragique… A lire absolument !!!

This is the first of Lloyd Jones’s books to be published in the UK and it makes you wonder why? Mister Pip was nominated for the Man Booker PrIze last year and would have been a worthy winner. As the title suggests, it is, in part, about a reading of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, but to leave it at that would do this novel a great disservice. It is a story, told through the eyes of Matilda (a young girl at the start of the story and a young adult at the end of it) and her life on a remote Pacific island in the grips of civil war. The only white man on the island, the eccentric Mr Watts, re-opens the village school. He has no teaching experience, only his love of Great Expectations. The village becomes witness to a number of atrocities, but it is Mr Watts’s storytelling that enables Matilda to survive.

On the one hand, I loved this book has a story about teaching. Watts is no trained teacher, but a gifted one nonetheless, recognising that at the heart of allgood teaching is the relationship of trust and respect between teacher and pupil. But more than that, this is a book whose extraordinary simplicity of narrative conceals a tremendous power. It is a book about remembering and, therefore, storytelling. And that even made-up stories can hide a greater truth. Remembering and telling stories are what keep us human – it is when we lose the capacity for story that we cease to be humans and atrocities are committed. And telling stories also allow us to dream, to plan for our futures and, therefore, this is also a book about storytelling as a survival technique. Whether Matilda, as a child, is trying to remember her father, or as an adult remembering her mother and Mr Watts; whether the schoolchildren are trying to remember Great Expectations once the island’s copy has been lost; whether it is the islanders remembering their ancestors and folk knowledge; whether it is the rebels remembering what it is to be human – this whole book is, in fact, an act of remembrance and also a celebration of what it means to be human. This is a tremendous little book.

           If you’ve come across One Big Damn Puzzler by John Harding, the plot of Lloyd’s Jones’ Mister Pip may seem familiar: the introduction of a classic text of English literature to a remote Pacific island civilisation that exposes the chasms between ‘civilised’ and primitive culture. However where Harding dramatises the damage wrought on a preliterate society by the invasion of Western Capitalism, Jones explores the consequences of how, in the midst of a brutal civil war, literature has the power to displace – to teach a person to inhabit their imagination.

            Matilda is our narrator, growing up 1990’s Bougainville: an island in the South Pacific. As her village quakes nervously amid the conflict between rebel forces and the Papa New Guinea government army, Matilda is distracted by the intervention of Mr. Watts – a white immigrant who takes it upon himself to rekindle the Bougainville children’s neglected education. The source of the curriculum is Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations; Matilda learns to escape the sense of inevitability that haunts her village by following Mr Pip in his journey through 19^th century England.

            Jones structures his story around the tensions that arise from the collection and cultivation of knowledge in an infrastructure focused on survival. He demonstrates how the social fabric of a community relies on communication. Matilda struggles to explain the power of literature to her fundamentalist mother who despises Mr Watt’s as a heathen. The children collectively use their education about an alien world to escape the terror of their everyday life. The secrets held by Matilda, her mother and Mr Watts seal the fate of the village as the government forces approach. Great Expectations succeeds in distancing the innocent from the military conflict, but it is their very naivety that endangers them. The question for the reader is whether their imaginative escapism provides a protective shield for the children or a dangerous delusion distant from grim reality.

            Matilda’s testimony is touchingly acute in its innocence, honesty and frank language. Her persistent interrogation of Mr. Watts about the distant realm of white society, puzzling over words like ‘frost’ and ‘beneficiary’, is extremely endearing. The narrative is strikingly creative coming as it does from the pen of a white, male, middle-aged New Zealander.

            At the beginning of the book the threat of violence paroles the perimeter of Matilda’s story but, like the creeping vegetation that left un-maintained ‘would march down the steep hillside and bury our villages in flower and vine’, the war suddenly emerges from the jungle, wreaking devastating consequences for Matilda and her community. Simultaneously tragic and comic, heart-warming and politically profound, Mister Pip expertly reveals the frightening expanse of human character; its weaknesses and its strengths.