Warm, poignant and inspiring - should have won last year's Booker

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	• Mister Pip Lloyd Jones Dial Press Trade Paperback, 2008 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 52 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A wonderful book about a little know subject

I loved this book so much the first time I read it from the library, had to buy it to reread it and share with my family. The subject is one many Americans probably know little about, but as an expatriate Australia I remember the episodes and hearing about them growing up. The use of Dickens tale as a metaphor just made it all the more poignant. I heartily recommend this book to anyone who loves a good read, and wants to learn more about history of an area that is foreign to many Americans.

Set to become a modern classic.

'Mister Pip' is a well thought-out and sympathetically-written story about a young girl, Matilda, caught up in civil war on the South Pacific tropical island where she has lived all her life.

War threatens the everyday lives of people from Matilda's village. The young men have already gone off to war, and the villagers live under constant threat of attack and other war atrocities. There is one white man left, Mr. Watts, who has been married to villager Grace for some years. Grace, however, doesn't seem to be quite of right mind and she and Mr. Watts have been mostly ignored or ostracised by the rest of the village. They live in a big house on the village outskirts and lead quite separate lives. As the war progresses Mr. Watts soon takes on the responsibility of Teacher at the little one-room school, using as his textbook Dickens's 'Great Expectations'. He reads the book aloud to the children, until the story takes on meaning and becomes something of an obsession, especially to Matilda, and Mr. Pip becomes a very real character in this war-torn community.

The book is lyrically written, often hinting at meaning rather than overtly stating it, with a simplicity that suits the story being told. Touching and heartbreaking; but I have given 4 stars instead of 5 as I didn't quite warm to the characters as much as I wanted to, especially Matilda and Mr. Watts. Winner of the 2007 Comonwealth Writers' Prize and shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker, the book seems sure to become a modern classic and I wouldn't be surprised to see it one day as a school text. Reminiscent of, although quite different from, William Golding's 'Lord of the Flies'.

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Great Expectations...Fulfilled

I had great expectations for Mister Pip, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize (and, in my mind, far more deserving than The Gathering). I'm pleased to say that my expectations were truly met. This imaginative, courageous, and heartbreaking book captured my own imagination and will stay with me a long time.

The book takes place on a lush tropical island -- a paradise -- with Garden of Eden overtures. Here, Mr. Watts -- the only white inhabitant, a somewhat eccentric schoolteacher -- and Grace, the mother of the main character Matilda, wrestle for her soul, through fiction and religion. Both are products of imagination; both have the power to transform and both are redemptive. And ultimately, the moral values of both Mr. Watts and Grace emerge to be essentially the same.

There are surprises at the end and heartbreaks -- no spoilers -- that have haunted me since closing the last pages. There is wisdom about the power of imagination and reinvention, the nature of true courage, the way we repair ourselves with stories old and new.

And in the end, Lloyd Jones says it best: "Perhaps there are lives like that -- poured into whatever space we have made ready for them to fill... we needed a magician to conjure up other worlds and Mr. Watts had become that magician." Nothing is ever quite what it seems, and both art and religion have power and limitations. With its sparse, haunting prose and powerful story, Mr. Jones has conjured up some magic of his own.

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Good intentions and nothing else

Lloyd Jones' "Mr Pip" has all the good intentions in the right place, and this is the biggest problem of the novel. His subject is very interesting indeed. A simple girl's life being changed by her love for books. It has the heart one would expect to such a material, but it hasn't the profundity one would want. Jones' narrative is simple and predictable once you get where he is leading to. He also thrust in easy tears replacing wit sometimes, what is really sad, since he has so many good moments. As we all know, "Mr Pip" is one more brick in the road to hell.

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Warm, poignant and inspiring - should have won last year's Booker

In the civil war torn island of Bougainville in the early 1990s where rebels face off soldiers from encroaching forces, there lived a native community long deserted by whites who had fled to the safety of Australia and New Zealand except for one with a native wife who chose to remain behind as a local school teacher, like flotsam from an earlier tide. His name was Mr Watts but in the eyes of the children took on the name and identity of Mr Pip, a character from Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations", which he read and taught to the children. Mr Watts or Mr Pip, as he was fatefully known, through his story telling brought hope to the community by creating another world, one which though imaginary became more real than the one they lived in. In the words of little Matilda, Dickens' characters were more real to her than the many dead ancestors she never knew. While Dickens was undisputably a godsend, Mr Pip's quiet agnosticism became a bone of contention for the god fearing Dolores, Matilda's mother, who was increasingly resentful of Mr Pip's secular thoughts and its influence over her daughter and the other students.

Poor Mr Pip - visually, you can almost see actor Peter O'Toole in the role if a film version were made of the story - didn't see the tragedy that would unfold when his imaginary name and identity became the trigger point for trouble that would shatter the lives of the entire community. It is a testimony to author Lloyd Jones's tremendous skill and confidence as a writer and his understanding of how less might be more in that unforgettable scene of horror and carnage told with the pitiless brevity of a passing news item. That truth and integrity should surmount differences in belief and uphold the essence of humanity is indeed cause for righteous tears and celebration. After experiencing such a dramatic high, the closing narrative cannot but feel slightly anti-climactic. But that's only inevitable.

Lloyd Jones' "Mister Pip" is a tremendous of piece of work, warm, poignant and inspiring. It is possibly the strongest contender for last year's Booker prize. A book of enduring value that will be read beyond its current print run. Highly recommended.

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reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

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