A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (original 2007; edition 2008)

This is an amazing tale of tragedy and survival and proves once again that the human spirit can avail over anything. I would heartily recommend this book right alongside Dave Eggers' "What is the What". They deal with very similar stories and are both incredibly well written. ( )

This is one of those 100 books you are supposed to read according to Amazon. 12-year old Ishmael Beah was a child soldier from Sierra Leone. After being separated from his immediate family, who are likely dead, he goes on the run with some other kids, eventually aligning with soldiers as his new family. Killing becomes his way of life until he is rescued and rehabilitated. Through a series of lucky breaks, he is reunited with his uncle's family and then becomes involved with UN efforts to help children globally. Amazing story, but overly graphic and longer than necessary. ( )

Powerful story of courage and strength.
It took courage to go through the healing process, to go and live with family that he'd never met before; to go to America and speak (even though his uncle didn't believe in him); and when the rebels attacked again to leave the country for a better life because even though his friends around him gave in to becoming soldiers again, he realized he didn't want that for his life and he realized he wanted better for himself. ( )

I feel kind of horrible saying this because Beah's experiences were truly horrific and it is brave and heroic of him to tell his story, but the storytelling itself wasn't the strongest here. Very little of the story was spent describing his time in the army, which is understandable considering how traumatizing it was, but the subtitle of this book leads the reader to think there will be more of a discussion on this. Way too much time was spent on his roaming the countryside before his induction (abduction?) into the army, and it almost lost me completely. Beah's rehabilitation was touching, and I wouldn't have minded more reflection on his time in NYC (or when he moved there after his escape). Just overall, the story read unevenly. ( )

his writing is actually quite good. (this falls maybe somewhere between my tags of 'general' and 'literary' even.) it's beautiful in parts, which is interesting both because of the subject matter and how english isn't his first language.

this is an important an awful story, but in the end it's one of hope. my problem with it, and why i didn't rate it higher, is that we don't really get a clear picture of how that hope manifests. we see him go from soldier to civilian, and the months in between where he starts to become himself again. but during that time we aren't really shown how he is rehabilitated at all. he gets to be a spokesperson for how it's possible to rehabilitate children after war, but i don't have any idea how that was made to happen for him and his fellow soldiers/friends. i also would have liked him to take the story just another few months forward, of him getting to new york and what it was like to move here, to find a mother figure after losing so many family members, etc. all together this feels like something big is missing in this book for me. still, that resilience he has, and the abundant joy that is in his face in the author photo, is remarkable. ( )