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: #7713 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-14
• Binding: Hardcover
• 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 )

‘Jones proves sly, engaging, worth-reading and even re-reading’

(London Review of Books )

‘Haunting and morally complex, the novel deserves its place on the list and would make a worthy winner’

(Andrew Holgate, Sunday Times )

‘An affecting tale’

(Killian Fox, Observer )

‘Mister Pip is a traditional novel, but it also topical … Regardless of who wins on October 16th. Mister Pip, through the simplicity and candour of Matilda’s singular narrative voice, may prove the most difficult to forget’

(Eileen Battersby, Irish Times )

‘Sad, beautiful, poignant, moving and honest, this is a remarkable book’

(Good Book Guide )

‘Lovingly fleshed out with memorable characters, some almost worthy of Dickens himself’

(Wall Street Journal )

‘Both island and war are quietly conveyed through the engaging, intelligent, often understated narrative voice’

(Geraldine Bedell, Observer )

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

An interesting read that doesn't quite get where it's going
This is a very interesting book indeed. The central character is a young girl caught up in civil unrest on an island in New Guinea. When all those who are able to flee the island do so, the only remaining white man, a somewhat eccentric New Zealander, begins teaching the island's children. He is not a teacher by trade and the only text he has at his disposal is a well-worn copy of Great Expectations. The scene is set for the author to explore some very interesting themes - the clash of Western and tribal cultures, the role stories play in our lives (both our own and those from literature), the way grasping an opportunity can change our lives forever, the horrors of civil unrest.....Along the way we are treated to some truly insightful moments and some intriguing plot twists. Then somewhere near the end things go wrong. None of the ideas that have been taken up are brought to a satisfactory conclusion and the plot just seems to fade away into oblivion. I would still recommend reading the book. It is conceptually interesting and ambitious, but somehow doesn't quite get where it wants to go.

Loved it!!!
In the nightmarish conclusion to Waugh's A Handful of Dust, the civilised Tony Last finds himself imprisoned in a jungle village, forced to spend his days reading Little Dorrit to the illiterate Mr Todd. In the world of Mister Pip, however, reading Dickens represents salvation for a community ravaged by conflict. The winner of the 2007 Commonwealth Prize, Lloyd Jones's novel is set in a village on the Papua New Guinea island of Bougainville during a brutal civil war there in the 1990s. Jones covered it as a journalist, and this delicate fable never shies away from the realities of daily life shadowed by violence. As Matilda, the 13-year-old narrator, begins her story, a blockade has begun. Helicopters circle, the generators are empty and all the teachers have fled. Apart from the presence of pidgin Bibles, civilization might never have touched the village. Loved it!!! I would also recommend, if you missed reading TINO GEORGIOU'S masterpiece--THE FATES, go and read it.

"Mister Pip" by Lloyd Jones
A wonderfully simple, yet moving tale of a young girl caught up in civil war on a small and 'insignificant' Pacific island of Bougainville, far-removed and unreported to the rest of the world.

The book introduces the poor yet satisfied-to-a-point existence on this island from the perspective of a black girl named Matilda. A white man, Mr Watts, (the only amongst an entirely black village) opens up the local school again to teach, so that the children may learn something of the world. He invites the children's parents in, so that they may impart their own knowledge and thus stirring their curiosities.

This man seems strange, almost like he is hiding a past that is long forgotten. His wife, even stranger seems to be mad....but why? Mr Watts through the medium of Dickens' Great Expectations, speaks to the children of their own wants and needs. Of places far away and far-removed from their experiences on this island.

The story is compelling and emotive, and I could barely put this book down, as this entriguing tale draws you in. The attrocities that follow will stay with me for some time to come. The author writes about the experiences of this young girl unusually well. An awareness is developed of how some lives are touched by the kindness and encouragement of others.

As a teacher, I found this to be particularly profound, the influence one life can have on another....the terrible tragedies which befall many children from similar backgrounds....beautiful.