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| View Larger Image | Mister Pip
by Lloyd Jones
| | List Price: | $12.00 | | Price: | $9.60 | | You Save: | $2.40 (20%) |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 4613 | | Studio: | Dial Press Trade Paperback | | | Binding: | Paperback | | Number Of Pages: | 272 | | Publication Date: | May 20, 2008 | | Publisher: | Dial Press Trade Paperback |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
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.
On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, where the teachers have fled with most everyone else, only one white man chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from Charles Dickens’s classic Great Expectations.
So begins this rare, original story about the abiding strength that imagination, once ignited, can provide. As artillery echoes in the mountains, thirteen-year-old Matilda and her peers are riveted by the adventures of a young orphan named Pip in a city called London, a city whose contours soon become more real than their own blighted landscape. As Mr. Watts says, “A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe.” Soon come the rest of the villagers, initially threatened, finally inspired to share tales of their own that bring alive the rich mythology of their past. But in a ravaged place where even children are forced to live by their wits and daily survival is the only objective, imagination can be a dangerous thing.
From the Hardcover edition. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 50 reviews)
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Not Interesting 
Perhaps, in some way, this could be considered good literature. But, there is one thing it certainly ISN'T, and that is interesting. It's also not "sheer magic," as the back of the book attests. Be wary.
August 31, 2008 | |
Take Me Away - 
Mister Pip tells shows how a story can change your life and how books can take you away in your imagination and alter your existence. Matilda lives in a simple village, violence erupts all around. Soldiers violate the village where the villagers live in fear. Mr. Watts the only white man in the small village takes over as teacher and reads Great Expectations aloud to the children. This has a great impact on Matilda and the children, and even the mothers get in on the act and share thoughts and ideas of their own to the children in the classroom a feat they undertake with great importance.
I haven't read Great Expectations and it didn't hamper my reading of this novel-although it did make me want to read it...
Great Expectations and Pip in particular, change Matilda's life - they help her survive and carry her further in life and give her a purpose. Mr. Watts is her idol and serves as a mentor.
I enjoyed the island life at it's peaceful times and the way the village Moms related knowledge to the children such as how to tell the weather from watching a crab.
This book gives us a glimpse at what it must be like to live in a village where the supplies are re-routed by rebels, where a sleeping mat or a single pencil is a most treasured item. The children in the village had never seen a building, but they try to imagine Dicken's London and it takes them away.
It does take a more violent turn toward the end but you read it and come to your own conclusions regarding the strengths and weaknesses of this book. I think you'll enjoy the experience.
July 26, 2008 | |
The Impact of To Kill a Mockingbird 
This book resonated with me like my first reading of "To Kill a Mockingbird". Llyod Jones paints a vivid picture of daily life on a small island in the Pacific. As trouble descends, the tension mounts. Each generation finds a different way of coping and the point of view of an adolescent girl adds poignancy to the tale. A wonderful book which makes the reader take a hard look at what matters at the heart of life.
July 21, 2008 | |
Mr. Pip- a wonderful, enthralling novel
Mr. Pip is set on an island. It is a narrative of events that happened there told through the eyes of a young girl. It is a wonderful read that has sent me back to re-read Great Expectations. Loved this book!! My son discovered the book by reading the first three chapters in a small give away glossy magazine called "Bit of Lit". What a great way to sample new work!
July 17, 2008 | |
Well written, but it doesn't quite ring true
Yes, this book is very well written. But is Matilda's voice really authentic? To some extent the maturity of the young girl's voice and her infatuation with a book from a different culture could be explained by the selection process; after all, such a story wouldn't be narrated by someone without these features, and maybe one girl out of a village could pass this unusual filter. And the enthusiasm of the other children could be partly her projection of her thoughts and enthusiasm, as it is her narrative.
Yet Mr Watts is a bit too much a caricature to elicit the reverence he receives. (And, yes, Dickens is full of caricature.) He's more whatever he needs to be for the plot, rather than a coherent whole. And why does someone so well versed in one book, no matter how much he loves it, appear not to have any other books? Having finished Great Expectations there was nothing left for his class but to start it over?
Then there are the plot devices, such as "the" book disappearing at exactly the moment when it was needed to avert disaster. (Again, yes, Dickens is full of such plot coincidences.) But does it really make sense that to show some fighters a book with a name in it would make them happy, and prevent disaster?
Even though I might have swallowed all of this, the ending just didn't ring true at all. The author's need to tie up the loose ends forced him into more compromises of his protagonist's character than it seemed worth.
Very well written, but too many distracting questions for five stars.
July 14, 2008 | |
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