A wonderful story about the power of language, the horror of life, and most of all, how to be a moral human being. It isn't easy! It isn't often that I am totally surprised by a twist of plot, but it happened in this book, and it was powerful! ( )

The story takes place on an island off the coast of Australia in the '90s. It's told from the point of view of a native girl. The village, where she lives, is populated by native blacks and only one white man, Mr.Watts. He is married to a native, Grace Watts, and is strange. He pulls his wife behind him in a cart wearing a clown nose every once in a while. When war breaks out between rebels and redskins, school is closed, until Mr. Watts reopens it. He tries to teach the children by reading from Charles Dickens' 'Great Expectations'.  She learns that the fictional character of Pip, can become her best friend and that a book can change her life.
The book was very charming in the beginning and Matilda, the girl, is introduced. You get comfortable with the story and then are completely jarred when a despicable act of violence is committed. The book was shocking and thought-provoking, as well as funny and sweet. A great story. ( )

http://www.flr.follett.com/search?SID=c8...

Kirkus Review 07/01/07

2007 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book in South East Asia and the South Pacific

This book began brilliantly, and I was captivated. I'm a big reader, and I've never come across anything quite like it. I was absolutely fascinated by the characters. But, as with the review by trishtrash below, I was disappointed in the final part of the book. I found myself skipping entire paragraphs, and I no longer was interested in the fate of Matilda, the protagonist.

Pop Eye, better known as Mr. Watts, takes it upon himself to educate the children despite a lack of supplies and textbooks.

This book engaged, bored, gripped, shocked and then lost me again, leaving me with an uneven impression of its overall worth… it might have helped if I felt even a modicum of the warmth that Matilda, the principal character, did for the characters of Great Expectations. No one who has ever lost themselves in a world of books to escape parts of their childhood will find it hard to identify with Matilda during the majority of this book, and the story of her life on the island was very well told; but during the last thirty or so pages, the entire ending seems to wander off, the book tries to do something else, and left this reader a little disappointed.

An okay read, though I can understand why some might have enjoyed it far more than I. ( )

the ann frank of the pacific: a 13 year old girl tells the tale of growing up on an island in the pacific where after civil war, they are cut off from the rest of the world. The enigmatic Mr. Watt, agrees to teach the children and uses Great Expectations by C Dickens as the text book. Mathilda learns about the power of books and paralels between her life and Pip, the main character of Dicken's book. A powerful lovely book.

Every avid reader has had the experience of being drawn so deeply into a narrative by the skill of a talented writer that real boundaries suddenly yield to the life of the imagination. In his captivating novel Mister Pip, New Zealander Lloyd Jones richly celebrates that magical experience.

Mister Pip is set on Bougainville, a small island off the coast of Papua New Guinea that finds itself in the midst of a bloody civil war between government soldiers known as “redskins,” and rebels dubbed “rambos.” Soon the rambos shut down the island’s copper mine and the redskins respond with a naval blockade. The island’s inhabitants, including the narrator of the novel, a bright and engaging thirteen-year-old named Matilda, are thrust into a struggle for survival.

In the midst of this turmoil, an enigmatic white man named Mr. Watts, nicknamed “Pop Eye” by the island's children, steps forward to assume the duties of their teacher. Recognizing that circumstances preclude the teaching of a conventional curriculum, he instead introduces his students to Charles Dickens’ classic, Great Expectations. From the first chapter, Matilda and her classmates identify with the story of the orphan Pip, striving to relate his experiences in mid-19th century England to the harsh realities of their own lives. When the text from which Mr. Watts has been reading mysteriously disappears, the children demonstrate the extraordinary degree to which they’ve internalized the story by their ability to reconstruct much of the novel’s plot from memory.

Like many hungry for control, the warring factions recognize the subversive power of great literature and Mr. Watts’ infatuation with Great Expectations ends in violence and tragedy. But in an emotionally powerful coda to the story, Matilda reveals how her life has been changed irrevocably by the love of literature inspired by Dickens’ novel.

Mister Pip has been published to great acclaim in Australia and the United Kingdom, and was the recipient of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best Book Award 2007. It’s a generous and moving exploration of the almost miraculous way in which books can transport any reader across vast expanses of space and time. ( )

Mister Pip is an EPL Teen Survivor pick for 2009. It was the winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book, and a finalist for the Man Booker Prize.

It is described in the dust jacket as a "fable-like novel", a "transcendent tale" which does capture the essence of what it is like to read Mister Pip. It is the story of 13 year old Matilda, living on a war-ravaged South Pacific Island with her mother. "Mister Pip", as he becomes known, is the self-designated white teacher who steps in to educate the children after all the teachers flee the island. His instruction during the day is largely consumed by readings from Great Expectations, which becomes analogous to Mister Pip's own life, slowly revealed throughout the book. Matilda becomes enraptured both with the character Pip in the book, as well as with Mister Pip himself.

It is both a simple story and a complex tale. Mister Pip is a starred review in Booklist, and an excellent read for junior high and senior high readers.

http://www.amazon.ca/Mister-Pip-Lloyd... ( )

I truly enjoyed this book… a coming of age story about Matilda, who lives on a remote island off the coast of Papua New Guinea (what an exotic location!). Mr. Pip is the only white person living in the island, and after he decides he is going to be the school master, he begins to read aloud to his pupils Dickens’s Great Expectations. There are some scenes that depict violence in the island due to the “rebellion;” however, the story is wonderfully crafted: the plot, and the characters make this a great read, despite the violent scenes. ( )

very well received; next book on the agenda was of course "Great Expectations"

Because I had read [Great Expectations] for the first time only recently, I was intrigued with the title and the little bit I had read about this book. At first, the story went along pretty much as I had expected it to. As the children were using their imaginations to try to understand Dicken's main character, Pip, and the England he lived in; I, the reader, was learning about them and their families, their growing up on an island in Papua New Guinea. Even though there was a conflict going on between rebels and government troops regarding a mine on their island (a true event, by the way), it seemed more of a historical background for a coming-of-age story that was sweet/charming, as well as the reason for why this "last White man" had come into their lives. Instead, the book turns much darker as Mr. Dicken's "Pip" becomes a very real character in their lives in ways neither they (nor I) could have imagined as the war comes to their village.

This book opens with so much praise from critics that it's initially a challenge to find where the story begins. It is recommended by newspapers from Britain, Australia and New Zealand, magazies including 'Saga' and 'Good Housekeeping', and it was part of Richard and Judy's Book Club, and it was shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize. In some respects, that makes this a daunting read. Not because I think it will be too worthy or challenging, but because I always suspect I will be disappointed when a book is so massively hyped up. How can it possible be as good as these thirty million people are suggesting? My inner sceptic folded its arms as I started to read.

'Everyone called him Pop Eye. Even in those days when I was a skinny thirteen-year-old I thought he probably knew about his nickname but didn't care. His eyes were too interested in what lay up ahead to notice us barefoot kids.'

The first paragraph immediately illuminates several key points. This is a retrospective narrative told by a maturing teenager, suggesting that to some extent we will follow her emotional development. We are introduced to a central character, whose nickname makes him seem strange but whose description hints at untold wisdom. Perhaps he will be some kind of mentor for the narrator. There is a sense of us and them which deepens when the reader learns that Pop Eye (or Mr Watts) is a rarity who quickly becomes an oddity: the only white man left on the island since it was blockaded as part of a civil war. In a way then, the basic themes of the novel seem clear from the first page; this is probably just as well, since this is a fairly slim novel (219 pages in the paperback edition).

The joy of reading this comes from the simplicity with which the story is told. The narrator's descriptions are simple but telling, using language that is appropriate to her life in a small, isolated village on a small, nearly-forgotten island. When describing Pop Eye further we learn that:
'His large eyes in his large head stuck out further than anyone else's - like they wanted to leave the surface of his face. They made you think of someone who can't get out of the house quickly enough.'

In fact, the simplicity of the style and language may initially lull you into feeling this is quite a calm tale, but as the civil war worsens and events become increasingly dramatic, the understated style allows the reader to be more shocked by the terrible events that happen.

The real story begins when Mr Watts decides to re-open the school and teach the children using only one textbook: 'Great Expectations'. This initially creates some mild humour as the children pass on Mr Watts' initial message to their parents: tomorrow they will be meeting Mr Dickens. This unfamiliar, white man's name creates quite a stir and the next day each child arrives to school with a list of things they would like the mysterious Mr Dickens to provide: kerosene, matches, aspirin...

What Mr Dickens really seems to provide, at least initially, is confidence for Mr Watts. Weak on geography, lacking in the history of the famous names he passes on to them, he is always grateful to pass on what he is sure of: the work of the greatest British writer ever. The children appear to be under a spell, for although they have to query much of the vocabulary ('What does "rimey" mean?' 'It means misty. Foggy.' 'Ok...what does "foggy" mean?') as they learn about life in Victorian London, they enjoy the story so much that they take little snippets home to their parents. This is where the story really provides something for the children: trapped in their homes with the danger increasingly threatening, (gradually, the families' older boys vanish to become fighters,) they are able to escape to a marvellous alternative world as they follow Pip's journey.

For their families, the story has a rather different effect: unease. The narrator, Matilda, seems increasingly drawn into a battle between her mother, who believes in the Bible, God and the devil, and Mr Watts, who believes in none of those things, but does believe in the power of literature. How Mr Watts responds to this leads to some quite entertaining scenes, until an underhand act and a child's error combine to create a violence that gathers a fearful momentum. The main section of the book is concerned with these battles.

The final section of the book is rather different and seems somewhat unnecessary. Matilda learns truths that seem of little value and the book feels rather aimless by the end, the links to 'Great Expectations' strained in order to create a work of thoroughly modern, post-colonial meta-fiction. It does start to feel a little 'worthy'. That criticism aside, the novel is worth reading to enjoy Matilda's distinctive voice and remember that literature really can have powerful effects - for good and ill. ( )

This was a strange little book, which has any number of elements which would normally combine to irk me a great deal: a middle-aged white man writing in the voice of a teenage girl of colour from a remote island in Papua New Guinea; a style so simple and staccato that it seemed almost tonally at odds with the extreme violence which is described towards the end; some rather smug, back-slapping, Kipling-esque undercurrents; a denouement which is described too quickly, falling rather flat and continuing on for a good forty pages longer than it needed to.

And yet almost despite myself, I found myself really enjoying Mister Pip. Jones has something wonderful to say about the power of the imagination, of shared imagination and emotion, which pulls the whole novella together and makes it work. It makes it entirely believable that a barely literate young woman would find a connection with a fictional character from a book set a century ago and thousands of miles away—and not just believable, but compelling. ( )

“I will be honest with you. I have no wisdom, none at all. The truest thing I can tell you is that whatever we have between us is all we’ve got. Oh, and of course Mr. Dickens.”

So begins Mr. Watts (Pop Eye) in his not-so confidence-instilling speech to the children at the inception of his informal, short-lived teaching career. Showing he does actually possess wisdom to some degree, Mr. Watts also tells the children “I want this to be a place of light…No matter what happens.” Mr. Watts is the sole remaining white man on the island of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea throughout the dark times of the 1990s civil war.

In Mister Pip, Matilda narrates her story of going to school and learning about life and literature even as death and violence circles her village. As Matilda notes, school with Mr. Watts is different. “This was school, but not how I remembered it. Perhaps that’s why everything felt strange, as if we were trying to squeeze into an old life that didn’t exist anymore, at least not in the way we remembered.” Through Mr. Watts’ teaching methods, the children learn to navigate the new circumstances of their lives. A large piece of Mr. Watts teaching centers around helping the children discover new and personal connections with Mr. Dickens’ Great Expectations from which Mr. Watts reads one chapter every day.

To supplement Great Expectations and the other gaps in Mr. Watt’s knowledge (what is chemistry the study of again?), he invites the children’s parents into the classroom so that they can share their own particular knowledge. Out of these occasions the children come away with new insight into topics such as the color blue, faith, the devil, octopus slaughtering and turtle cooking techniques, sex, and weather forecasting (”Trust crabs above all others”). But it is the reading of Great Expectations that provides the classroom anchor and the daily haven even as the village is surrounded by both government and rebel troops.

As Pip and his story become more important and intertwined with the children’s stories, the parents become increasingly uneasy. Matilda’s mother, Dolores, in particular, feels that Great Expectations has no relevance to the children’s lives. For Dolores, her Bible is the only worthy book: “Faith is like oxygen. It keeps you afloat at all times,” and she worries that her daughter’s interest in Pip may lead her to disregard her ancestry and the teachings of the Good Book. Dolores begins to see Mr. Watts as her enemy and rival.

All of this unrest over Great Expectations leads to the only copy of the book disappearing, but by that time, the children know the story so well that they re-create Pip’s story from their memories and their imaginations. Mr. Watts teaches the children that they each have a unique voice and he encourages them to use it, “Your special gift that no one can ever take from you.”

Dolores’ insecurities about the book and about Matilda’s connections to it lead her to tell Matilda to record her ancestors’ names on the beach. Dolores hopes that this action will force Matilda to remember and revere her ancestors like she remembers the book. But Matilda feels more connected to Pip, and she ends up with “Pip” inscribed into the sand on the beach. When the redskins (government soldiers) see “Pip” written in the sand and when they keep hearing his name, they decide that Pip must be a rebel spy. They demand that he turn himself in.

The redskins issue ultimatums to the villagers that they procure Pip or else. Without the book and without a Pip to bring forth, Mr. Watts declares himself to be Pip, and he begins a multi-evening storytelling event in which the tale he tells is partly Pip’s, partly the islanders’, and partly his own as soldiers and villagers alike listen on. All do not live happily ever after, however, as this is war and the redskins and the rebels trust no one and treat others’ with wartime brutality.

Mister Pip stands as a profound post-colonial work commenting on story construction and the power of story, the atrocities of war, and the vicissitudes of human morality. Mister Pip has been recognized as such, making the short list for the Man Booker Prize and winning the Commonwealth Prize and the Alex Award (click here for more Alex Award Winners: adult books with special appeal for young adults).

Takeaway Quotes:

“A gentleman is a man who never forgets his manners, no matter the situation. No matter how awful, or how difficult the situation…A gentleman will always do the right thing.”

“…to be human is to be moral, and you cannot have a day off when it suits” ( )

Mr Pip is fiction set in an historically accurate context of the civil war in Bougainville in the 1990s - a contemporary conflict, and for Australians, one that is on our door step.

The story is told through the eyes of a young village woman, Matilda. It has an originality of theme and approach. Great Expectations is used as a framework for much of the narrative – so for lovers of Dickens, to meet an old favourite in this clever way is a wonderful “added value” to the read. There is also clever commentary on cultural imperialism, without it ever actually being directly mentioned.

The book’s many layers and themes were skilfully interwoven to the extent that it defies attempts to box it neatly into a genre. It is a mystery, a war story, a love story, historical fiction….

The technical quality of the plot development, the use of Matilda as story teller and the seamless way it moved from Bougainville to Townsville and then New Zealand was exemplary. There is beautiful use of language, a style that is factual, and almost non emotive while at the same time, telling an emotionally charged and powerful story.

The character development, the way Jones treats human frailties and the cameos – especially Grace’s story – are highlights.

Be prepared for violence and tragedy and an ending that perhaps isn’t what it could have been. But most importantly, the book taught me something. I had heard about Bougainville of course, but until reading Mr Pip it was just another conflict of the many in the world. On finishing the book I was moved to find out more. ( )

This book largely takes place in a remote village on Bouganville, whose young men previously employed with the (now closed) mines have taken to the jungles as rebels, at war with the ever-threatening Redskins. Left behind are the older men, women, children and Mr Watts. Mr Watts takes on the role of educating the children, largely using 'Great Expecations' and inviting the parents kids in to pass on what they know to the children. Whilst there's a underlying sense of foreboding and reality, because of the innocence/ unworldliness/ community of the village and the telling of the enthusiastic younger Matilda, it feels magical. ( )

Mr Pip is set in Bougainville, the site of a rich copper mine that has been closed by rebels. Papua New Guinea has blockaded the island, cutting the inhabitants off from aid as war rages between the Bougainville rebels and the New Guinea soldiers. In the book details of the conflict are vague, as they are to the inhabitants who live in fear of violence and death from the fighters on both sides. So far, a book worth reading. The newspapers at the time concentrated on the fate of the copper mine, not of Bougainville's inhabitants. Mr Watts, the last white man on the island, takes on the job of school teacher and reads Great Expectations to the island children. The narrator, a thirteen year-old village girl, is inspired by the book and its main character. The uncovering of the mystery of Mr Watts is too trivial a conclusion; the Mr Pip conceit and the impact of the book on the Bougainvilleans are irritatingly phony. In the last section of the book the author plays around with the themes of imposture and truth, but to me that made the book even phonier. ( )

A book set on a small island that was in the midst of a brutal civil war in the early 1990's; it brings up issues of religion, belief, bravery, heroism, race, prejudices, and loss.
Wrtten very poetically at times, with thought provoking content, and some shocking moments later on.

It is written through the eyes of Matilda - a young inhabitant of the island - and is based around her, and the other villagers, relationship with the only white man living amongst them; who has exchanged his questionably more civilised life in New Zealand to live without luxury on their island. ( )

Since I recently read Great Expectations I decided to pick this up. It follows a teenage girl, Matilda, on a small remote island in the south pacific. Due to conflict they are cut off from the rest of the world and live in fear of the fighting that is occuring (I don't know much about the history in this part of the world, and the author doesn't go into detail beyond Matilda's understanding of it). There is one eccentric white man left that becomes the children's teacher. He reads Great Expectations to the kids partly as an escape from their situation, but also to learn about themselves. The plot gets somewhat choppy at times, yet that is how life would be in the wartime situation that these villagers are facing. ( )

Short, clever and moving. A small community in an island is surviving throught a time of war. The children go to school and are educated by Mr.Pip who introduce them to 'Great expectations'. The text will change the life of the little girl who is the main character. The weaving of Dickens' work and the main narrative is excellent. ( )

I have mixed feelings about this book. I loved it for the first 200 pages, and absolutely hated the last 50. I felt as though the ending did not connect to the rest of the story - but I am getting ahead of myself, so let me start with a synopsis.

Matilda lives on Bougainville, an island off the coast of Papua New Guinea. In the 1990s, Bougainville was blockaded, and the islanders fought for independence. Because of the blockade, Matilda's village is cut off from the rest of the world, and left to fend for itself. Mr. Watts, the one white man in the village, takes up the position of teacher, hoping to instill some form of knowledge in his students. Every day he reads one chapter of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations to the class. Matilda and her schoolmates become engrossed in Pip's world, despite the vast difference between a small island village in the 1990s, and Victorian London. Many of the students' parents do not understand the fascination with Pip, and feel that Mr. Watts is teaching unimportant or even dangerous ideas. As life in the village worsens, however, Matilda continues to find hope in Dickens' novel; her own life journey contains parallels to the book that she loves, and Pip's world seems more real than reality.

The ending was, like I said, very different. Violence and tragedy strike the village, and Matilda's life is changed forever. Jones' story had been slow and reflective up until this point, and had focused on a lot of everyday things. The tragic events moved at a much faster pace that felt contrary and ill-suited to the rest of the novel. So much of this book was about the beauty of books, and while this continues through the ending, the climax felt to me like Jones needed a way to end the novel, and so he created a disaster.

I still enjoyed Mister Pip, and I think it would be great to read alongside Great Expectations, as they can be compared on many levels. The ending was a problem for me, but the journey was beautiful to read. One paragraph in particular stayed with me, because it displays one of the greatest joys of reading:

"People sometimes ask me "Why Dickens?," which I always take to be a gentle rebuke. I point to the one book that supplied me with another world at a time when it was desperately needed. It gave me a friend in Pip. It taught me you can slip under the skin of another just as easily as your own, even when that skin is white and belongs to a boy alive in Dickens' England. Now, if that isn't an act of magic I don't know what is" (231). ( )

Matilda is a thirteen year old living in Bougainville, a small, isolated village by the sea on a copper-rich island in the South Pacific where war breaks out between rebels and soldiers. Only one white man stays on in the village, the eccentric Mr.Watts, also known as Pop Eye, who is married to a local, black woman whom he periodically pulls around on a platform on which she stands like a queen while he wears a red clown’s nose. Mr.Watts steps in to re-open the school, hampered slightly by the fact that he is not a teacher but, as he says, “I will do my best…with your parents’ help, we can make a difference to our lives.” The almost sole focus of Mr.Watts’ instruction is reading aloud Great Expectations, “the greatest novel by the greatest English writer of the nineteenth century.” The children, and especially Matilda, are enthralled by the story of Pip and his adventures as Mr.Watts opens their minds to the power of words, the wonder of different worlds, and the ability to transport yourself to those worlds. Mr.Watts breaches the isolation of the community in its ignorance of the wider world, but this is not welcomed by all others, particularly not Matilda’s mother who fears the hold that Pip and Mr.Watts have on her daughter and who thinks that Mr.Watts is a godless man leading children astray. So the conflict is set up and it isultimately resolved in a way that is both sublime and horrible.

At first the war is experienced only as a shortage of goods and trading: “News of war arrives as bits of maybe and hearsay. Rumor is its mistress. Rumour, which you can choose to believe or ignore.” The villagers can feed themselves from the sea and the jungle, but they cannot live forever in isolation and the fear and atrocities of the war come upon them in horrific ways.

This is one of those deceptively simple novels that engages a number of thoughts that bubble-up at the time and after reading. Mr.Watts may not be a trained teacher, but he has an innate sense of life instruction as when he invites mothers or other relatives to come to the school to recount whatever they think might be interesting and useful and they do, covering everything from premarital sex to the behavior of crabs and the meaning of the colour blue. And against this background of local knowledge and experience needed to live in the environment is the recognition, via the reading of Great Expectations, of the commonality of human experience across race, society, history. Great Expectations also provides more. For Mr.Watts, it “gave me permission to change my life”; for Matilda, it taught her, “that your life could change without warning” and that this “was very appealing”.

Coincident with change is the sense that nothing, and no one, can ever be completely known. Matilda discovers later in life that in reading Great Expectations, Mr.Watts had simplified it, leaving out parts and some characters, so when the children worked with Mr.Watts to try to recreate the novel (after the sole copy was destroyed), they were dredging their memories of a different novel, but that makes the effort, and the result, no less real. In this way, and others, Jones explores the essence of storytelling and how it can affect, guide, structure lives through the written and oral forms. Nor are people or events immune from this mutability and unknowability. Later in life, Matilida learns more about Mr.Watts’s life before he came to Bougainville and she learns that he had edited and changed his own life story as he told it to them: “I had no idea of the man June Watts knew.” But this is not important because, “I only know the man who took us kids by the hand and taught us how to reimagine the world, to see the possibility of change, to welcome it into our lives.” And so you judge on what you know: “Mr.Watts…was whatever he needed to be, what we asked him to be. Perhaps there are lives like that—they pour into whatever space we have made ready for them to fill. We needed a teacher, Mr.Watts became that teacher. We needed a magician to conjure up other worlds, and Mr.Watts became that magician. When we needed a savior, Mr. Watts had filled that role.”

Jones also explores the meaning of love, of love that does not alter when it alteration finds, of the importance of communication, of what it means to take a moral stand regardless of the consequences, of moral conflicts between two evils, of how the implications of even innocent gestures can spiral out of control with awful consequences. Lest this sound too depressing, it is not, and Matilda’s story ends on a hopeful note as she remembers Mr.Watts’ most important lesson: “It has occurred to me only recently that I never once say him with a machete—his survival weapon was story. And once, a long time ago and during very difficult circumstances, my Mr.Dickens had taught every one of us kids that our voice was special, and we should remember this whenever we used it, and remember that whatever else happened to us in our lives our voice could never be taken away from us.”

A wonderful novel. Strongly recommended.

This took a little getting into but worth the effort. ( )

Wonderfully thoughtful book that plumbs to the depths of issues such as moral and ethical dilemmas, power and civilization, war and peace, all told through the eyes of a 13-year-old girl being taught through the reading of Dicken's Great Expectations. Great book for a book club. ( )