Product Description

‘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.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #247 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-10
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Daily Mail
`Morally subtle, Mister Pip has none of arid cleverness that often mars novels about books, making it a worthy winner of this year's Commonwealth Writers' Prize'

Review

‘It’s clear from the first page that this is prize-winning stuff… Being a truthful writer, Jones sees nothing neither his heroes nor his villains in black and white. His is a bold inquiry into the way that we construct and repair our communities, and ourselves, with stories old and new’

(The Times )

‘In this dazzling story-within-a-story, Jones has created a microcosm of post-colonial literature, hybridising the narratives of back and white races to create a new and resonant fable … There is a fittingly dreamy lyrical quality to Jones’s writing, along with an acute ear for the earthly harmonies of village speech … Mister Pip is the first of Jones’s six novels to have travelled from his native New Zealand to the UK. It is so hoped that it won’t be the last’

(Observer )

‘Mister Pip is a poignant and impressive work which can take its place alongside the classical novels of adolescence'

(Times Literary Supplement )

‘A major word-of-mouth bestseller’

(Sue Baker, Publishing News )

‘Intriguing and memorable’ (Glasgow Herald )

‘Cleverly encapsulating what it is to be an orphan, an immigrant or a person dispossessed of a regular beat of life, this extraordinary story…'

(Good Housekeeping )

‘Exotic locations add a dreamy quality to … Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones … Jones’ lyrical novel centres around a group of children in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, during the civil war in the Nineties’

(Vogue )

‘Morally subtle, Mister Pip has none of arid cleverness that often mars novels about books, making it a worthy winner of this year’s Commonwealth Writers’ Prize’

(Daily Mail )

‘Darker and more morally complex than it appears … Lloyd Jones gives the tired post-colonial themes of self-reinvention and the reinterpretation of classic texts a fresh, ingenious twist but his real achievement is bringing life and depth to his characters’

(Sunday Telegraph )

‘A must-read tale of survival by storytelling’

(Image Magazine (Ireland) )

‘A novel that, with amplitude and ease, affirms the acts of reading and writing as precious pursuits, as acts of survival, escape, renewal’

(Scotsman )

‘The value of moral fiction as a means of dealing with super-heated reality is the theme that gives this book exotic enchantment as a fable for our times’

(Saga Magazine )

‘(A) rather strange, quite wonderful book … Singular in its vision and muscular in its prose, you won’t forget this in a hurry’

(thelondonpaper )

‘An intelligent novel that says as much about the power of reading as it does about bloodshed and loss’

(New Statesman )

‘Mister Pip is a powerful and humane novel from one of New Zealand’s top writers’

(Financial Times Magazine )

‘A captivating read’ (Metro London )

‘Judges described it as a “mesmerising story showing how books can change lives in utterly surprising ways” '

(Independent )

‘Rarely … can any novel have combined charm, horror and uplift in quite such superabundance’

(D. J. Taylor, Independent )

‘Lloyd Jones brings to life the transformative power of fiction … The experience of reading in this book is tangible …This is a beautiful book. It is tender, multi-layered and redemptive’

(Sunday Times )

‘Magical and enchanting’

(Woman Magazine )

‘A dazzling piece of writing that lives long in the mind after the last page is finished’

(Whitefriars Magazine )

‘A mega-good read’

(Dovegreyreader Blog )

‘Moving’ (Sunday Telegraph )

‘Poignant, haunting and profoundly humane’ (Sunday Times )

‘Unforgettable’ (Bookseller )

The Times
`It's clear from the first page that this is prize-winning stuff . . . Being a truthful writer, Jones sees nothing neither his heroes nor his villains in black and white. His is a bold inquiry into the way that we construct and repair our communities, and ourselves, with stories old and new'

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Customer Reviews

Did I miss something?!
It was an easy read but I really felt as though I missed something important.... There seemed to be questions left unanswered. I did feel a little disappointed - especially as the title and the design of the book cover are so enticing!

An exercise in different types of storytelling
The main story unfolds in the exotic, and for most readers little-known location of the islands adjacent to Papua New Guinea, itself one of the newer indepdendent states. An accident of history placed the island of Bougainville, occupied by Melanesians ('blacks') and geographically part of the Solomon Islands, with the racially distinct Papua New Guinea ('Redskins'), leading to a rebellion against the mainland government in 1975 and an all-out war from 1990. Mr Pip is set in the context of the latter, with rural communities trying to exist in what was dismissed as a civil conflict by the outside world, but which could also be described as a liberation struggle against a new set of colonial masters.

In this environment it is difficult for great literature to survive. However, Mr Pip, the rather eccentric and tatterdemalion outsider, becomes almost by default the conduit whereby one literary classic, Great Expectations will live on, inspiring the young islander Matilda to become a Dickens expert herself and thus a conveyor of a literary tradition (possibly eventually to her own people).

Such is the main story - nothing really exceptional. What is unusual is the way Lloyd Jones has added other layers of story-telling. We discover that Mr Pip has told an over-simplified version of Dickens to the village children. Then, when the book is destroyed in the violence inflicted by outsiders, the children gather together their fragments of memory and create a new narrative. Their success is one of the positive features of an otherwise rather depressing novel, indicating that great novels that inspire will not die even if they physically perish.

Other stories are told - Mr Pip's account of his former life, related to the 'Rambos', the black guerrillas - romantic, and fictitious, as revealed by June Watts later in the book.

Against this are set the values of the village women - the folk wisdom they reveal in the classroom, and the stance taken by Matilda's mother. Lloyd Jones portrays Bougainville in some detail (and this part of the book could have been shortened) and in contrast to the values of white society. The author has developed the theme of 'culture clash' in the displays set up in the spare room, at first an attempt to meld tribal/Western values, but later, and inevitably, separating out into distinct parts. One senses at the end of the novel that Matilda, an accomplished scholar apparently well-integrated into white society, is has herself become torn between the two and may well choose to return to her cultural, as well as her physical home.

Ashendon book group say
Bougainville is a real place - it is a small island located between Papua New Guinea and The Solomon Islands in the Pacific Ocean. The islands were German territory, handed to Australia who handed them to Papua New Guinea. Then copper was discovered and Australian mining companies moved in causing awful pollution. The islanders wanted their island and civil war ensued. Papua New Guinea was told to deal with it, by the Australians, and so blockaded Bougainville. The islanders who had enjoyed modern lifestyles and comforts were, in their isolation, sunk further and further into self-sufficiency and basic living standards. At the hands of the `Redskin' Papua New Guinea forces they also suffered unspeakable and inhumane acts of cruelty and violence.

Some of us wished we had known that before we read the book.

The book had mixed feedback from the group. No one really raved about it but some felt it was a `reading experience' and an amazing idea. One thing we all agreed is that the book only really gets going in the last 40 pages and what happens was totally unexpected.

Like `A Thousand Splendid Suns' we felt the author dealt with the subject matter in a very matter of fact style - much of what occurred was simply stated and had no need for more description.

Much of our conversation, surrounding the book, dug deep into the psyche of Mr Watts (Pop Eye) and his motivations.

We loved Matilda, particularly her character, her morals and her loyalties. We felt her Mum was well meaning, though narrow in her views. Her strength of faith and `preaching' becomes credible as the book moves on, as does her efforts to protect her daughter.

Would we recommend it? Mainly no, though some of us definitely will recommend this book to carefully selected others.