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Loading... A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldierby Ishmael Beah
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Wow! What an eye opening book. This is a well told story about a boy that endured a war and survived being a child solider. The author leads the reader through his story telling it in a way that makes you wonder how such things could happen in this world, especially to children. A strength of the book was the view-point it was told from. The first person point of view really made an impact. Another strengthen was the appropriate use of flashbacks. They occurred at the right time throughout the book and really added to the impact of the story. One thing I would say was a weak point of the book is that I wished there was more background information on the war itself. I really enjoyed the story of Ishmael, but I wish that I knew more about the war itself. ( )I'm not finished yet but this story is heartwrenching. You can see he was regular, innocent young boy who was forced to change into something altogether diffferent. His story of the war before becoming a soldier is horrific enough, but it continues to become more gruesome as a youth fighter. FOR MORE MATURE READERS, IT IS AN IMPORTANT BOOK ABOUT WAR, HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS AND IMMIGRANT STORIES. A Long Way Gone is a heart wrenching story of a boy soldier from Sierra Leone. While I can't say I loved reading this story it was very interesting and a topic that needs to be discussed in today's society. A strength of this book was getting the reader to think. The amount of violence was hard to handle but necessary to the story. Fiction or non-fiction? Non-fiction. What led you to pick up this book? It was the book club choice for October Plot summary: The story of Ishmael, a young boy, is Sierra Leone, who witnesses first hand the war in the early 1990s and eventually goes on to become a soldier to fight in the war against the rebels in order to survive and avenge the death of his family. What did you like most about the book? I like how the entire bookcomes full circle. You start with a happy boy, then into war, then recovery, happiness, war, and finally freedom. What did you think of the ending? I wasn’t sure how it was going to end, but having finished it I wish that I could hear more about his journey to New York and finding his new family, did he have contact anymore with the family he left behind. I feel like I’m still missing a crutial part of the story. The only reason I know he survived is because he wrote the book. Do you recommend this book? If you use a rating system, what’s your rating? Most definitely. I’d give it 4.5/5. A memoir of a young man that was forced to fight as a child soldier in the Seirra Leone Civil War during the late 90's. The story goes from the boys first experience with the war, when the rebels invaded his village, through his years being forced to fight as a soldier, and eventually to how he escaped and made his way to America. The book is a commentary on social conditions in parts of the world far from our home. 0.030 seconds to build listing no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0374105235, Hardcover)My new friends have begun to suspect I haven’t told them the full story of my life. “Why did you leave Sierra Leone?” “Because there is a war.” “You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?” “Yes, all the time.” “Cool.” I smile a little. “You should tell us about it sometime.” “Yes, sometime.” This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived. In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:12 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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