At long last, I have finished reading the novel, Mister Pip, written by Lloyd Jones. My copy of this novel was published in 2008. I've probably been reading it for three or four years!!! And it's only 256 pages long. My aunt recommended it to me years ago.
It's the first person narrative of a young woman named Matilda living on an island that is under siege as a small pawn in a multi-island war. She is a young teenager when the book begins and often at odds with her mother, who seems proud, dogmatic and unreasonable. The mother, of course, is worried about the war, her absent husband and her daughter's salvation and physical safety - but from the girl's perspective (and the reader's as well) the mother is simply difficult. We don't discover her super-human strength until late in the book, when it becomes impossible not to admire her, despite her obvious flaws. I will never forget the mother's heroism in her final act of defiance.
With war ravaging the island, they ask Mr. Watts, the island's only white resident, if he will teach school since all of their real teachers have fled. He agrees to do so, but he is not a teacher, so he spends much of every class period reading aloud from Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. The children are entranced by the story of Pip, which takes them away from their war-torn island to 19th century England, providing a much-needed escape. The children return to their huts at night and share story developments with their parents, who have no other source of entertainment. The entire island is caught up in the book, until the book disappears. The children and Mr. Watts then try to re-create the book in fragments from memory. Mathilda, our narrator, remembers it best and is Mr. Watts' favorite pupil.
When evil soldiers arrive to destroy all of their possessions and terrorize the residents of the village, Mr. Watts tells them his name is Mr. Pip. He regales them with mostly true but sometimes made-up tales of his life, hoping to escape the island on a boat at the end of the seven-night story.
I won't tell you how it ends, but it is shocking and disturbing -- man's inhumanity to man (and woman), man's (and woman's) humanity and bravery, young woman's instinct to survive and, later, thrive, despite the devastations of war.
These things happen. We go on. We remember. We will never forget.
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Here are some fragments from the book:
* "I want this to be a place of light," he said, "no matter what happens." He paused for us to digest this....For the first time we were hearing that the future was uncertain.
* When Mr. Watts read to us we fell quiet. It was a new sound in the world. He read slowly so we heard the shape of each word.
* in a book -- no one had told us kids to look there for a friend.
* Stories have a job to do. They can't just lie around like lazybone dogs. They have to teach you something.
* I discovered the value of four walls and a roof. Something about containment that at the same time offers escape. .... What they had kept safe was more than our possessions; our houses had concealed our selves that no one else ever saw.
* A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe.
*Dreams are nervy things. All it takes is for one stern word to be spoken in their direction and they shrivel up and die.
* I remember feeling preternaturally calm. This is what deep, deep fear does to you.
