Mister Pip (Hardcover)

by Lloyd Jones (Author)
Key Phrases: redskin soldiers, Mister Pip, Lloyd Jones, Great Expectations (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
A promising though ultimately overwrought portrayal of the small rebellions and crises of disillusionment that constitute a young narrator's coming-of-age unfolds against an ominous backdrop of war in Jones's latest. When the conflict between the natives and the invading redskin soldiers erupts on an unnamed tropical island in the early 1990s, 13-year-old Matilda Laimo and her mother, Dolores, are unified with the rest of their village in their efforts for survival. Amid the chaos, Mr. Watts, the only white local (he is married to a native), offers to fill in as the children's schoolteacher and teaches from Dickens's Great Expectations. The precocious Matilda, who forms a strong attachment to the novel's hero, Pip, uses the teachings as escapism, which rankles Dolores, who considers her daughter's fixation blasphemous. With a mixture of thrill and unease, Matilda discovers independent thought, and Jones captures the intricate, emotionally loaded evolution of the mother-daughter relationship. Jones (The Book of Fame; Biografi) presents a carefully laid groundwork in the tense interactions between Matilda, Dolores and Mr. Watts, but the extreme violence toward the end of the novel doesn't quite work. Jones's prose is faultless, however, and the story is innovative enough to overcome the misplayed tragedy. (July)
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From The Washington Post
On an island called Bougainville in the early 1990s, civil war rages. Rebels have taken up arms, and soldiers helicopter in from nearby Port Moresby to reestablish New Guinea's sovereignty over the island. All the whites have fled except one: Mr. Watts, a New Zealander married to a local woman. He offers to replace the departed teacher and reopen the village school; on the second day of class, he begins to read Great Expectations aloud.

Suddenly, the village's children have a refuge from the incomprehensible conflict engulfing their world. "We could escape to another place," declares Matilda, the 13-year-old narrator. "It didn't matter that it was Victorian England. We found we could easily get there."

New Zealand writer Lloyd Jones's spare, haunting fable explores the power and limitations of art as Matilda chronicles 21 increasingly desperate months. The villagers are trapped between the rebels and the soldiers just as inexorably as Matilda is caught between Mr. Watts and her fiercely religious mother. Outraged by her daughter's immersion in Great Expectations, a novel that she finds both immoral and dangerously irrelevant to their imperiled existence, Matilda's mother insists, "Stories have a job to do. . . . They have to teach you something."

The mother believes she's battling Mr. Watts for Matilda's soul. She already distrusts him because of his wife, Grace. Once a scholarship girl, Grace was supposed to "show the white world how smart a black kid could be," not give up her studies to get married. In the mother's mind, Mr. Watts is just like the white men who tempted away Matilda's father to a well-paid job (and plenty of alcohol) in Australia. They lure black folks from the path of righteousness and independence; Great Expectations is just as lethal as a bottle of booze.

So she hides the islanders' only copy of the book, an act that has mortal consequences. Finding the name "Pip" written in the sand, the soldiers assume he's a rebel leader; when Mr. Watts can't produce proof that "Pip" is just a character in a novel, they burn all the villagers' possessions. There's much worse to come in a bloody denouement that leaves Matilda bereft of the two people whose clashing values she tried so hard to reconcile.

Jones's tale would be bleak indeed were it not for the fact that in their ultimate moments Mr. Watts and her mother surmount their differences to affirm a shared moral code. Matilda grows up and goes to graduate school, still in love with Dickens and Great Expectations. But she also comes to understand that literature doesn't just offer escape, it can take you home. She puts aside her thesis on "Dickens' Orphans" and begins to write this story of the man who "had taught every one of us kids that our voice was special. . . . Whatever else happened in our lives our voice could never be taken away from us."

Copyright 2007, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: The Dial Press (July 31, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385341067
• ISBN-13: 978-0385341066
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #125,248 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

86 of 90 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "There Is No Frigate Like A Book", August 21, 2007

By	H. F. Corbin "Foster Corbin" (ATLANTA, GA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Emily Dickinson's famous lines "there is no frigate like a book to take us miles away" could not be more apropros of Lloyd Jones' magical MISTER PIP. Matilda, the narrator, is a black child entering puberty living in New Guinea when we first meet her. Her beloved father has left her and her mother to seek his fortune in Australia and try to, in the words of her mum, "turn into a white man." Matilda becomes fascinated, as does the reader, with the only white man on her island, Mr. Watts (some days he wore a red clown's nose), nicknamed by the children of the village "Pop Eye." His wife is a black woman named Grace whom he often pulls around on a trolley. When war breaks out and many people flee the settlement, Mr. Watts teaches the remaining island children. He reads aloud to his spellbound students Charles Dickens' GREAT EXPECTATIONS, which he describes as the greatest novel by the greatest English writer of the nineteenth century. Dickens' character Pip makes an indelible impression on the young Matilda and becomes much more real to her than dead relatives. Much of the conflict in this beautifully crafted story has to do with the tension between Mr. Watts, who does not believe in a god, and Matilda's mother Dolores, a devout believer in the Good Book. Matilda sees many parallels between her life and that of the fictional Pip. As an adult she remembers his confession,"it is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home" and thinks of her island. That passage and many others she sees as "personal touchstones."

Mr. Jones' narrative will hold you in its spell, and you will long remember Mr. Watts. Like many teachers, he is part charlatan, part magician, but also a kind and loving mentor. He is more alive than many of the people on the nightly news-- and certainly more decent-- and as real as William Styron's Sophie, John Updike's Rabbit or Thomas Hardy's Tess.

MISTER PIP says wondrous things about the power of the imagination, the permanence of storytelling-- when the novel is lost, Mr. Watts and his students remember fragments from it and write them down-- kindness and courage. The author is a wizard with words, but he also lets his characters make profound statements about life as well. For example, the Jones' ocean shuffles up the beach and draws out; Matilda hears "the lazy flip-flop of the sea--so much louder at night than during the day" and Mr. Watts defines the word "opportunity" to his students: "'The window opens and the bird flies out.'" Matilda, from reading this one book of Dickens, finds out that "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, is that isn't an act of magic I don't know what is." Another character muses on youth and age: "' Everyone was young in those days. That's the main complaint you hear from people who are getting old. You stop seeing young people. You begin to wonder if there are any left and whether there were only young people when you were young.'"

When you finish this haunting and intense story, you very well may want to reread the Dickens' account of the young Pip and his journey to becoming a gentleman. I know I do.

29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wondrous--An author of world-standing literary ability, August 21, 2007

By	B. Case "InquiringMind" (Redondo Beach, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"Mister Pip" by Lloyd Jones is the wondrous coming-of-age story about Matilda Laimo, a 13-year old Papua New Guinean child living on the island of Bougainville. It is an enchanting, lyrical, lush, and politically powerful tale by a prize-winning author of world-standing literary ability. The book has already won the 2007 Commonwealth Prize for literature and is currently among thirteen titles longlisted for the 2007 Booker Prize. It has been sold for distribution in the United States for an unprecedented sum; even if the author fails to win the Booker Prize, it will still make him a millionaire. If the book wins the Booker Prize, it is destined to be a big-time modern literary and popular crossover bestseller.

The story is set in 1991. The mainland Papua New Guinean government is involved in a civil war with the inhabitants of Bougainville, a large island off its southeastern edge--an island abundant in gold and copper resources. The population and culture of Bougainville is more similar to the Solomon Islands archipelago. where it belongs geographically rather than to any of the diverse mainland tribes of Papua New Guinea. As the novel begins, the child is barely aware of the conflict. She is black, and she views the invading government forces as foreign redskins.

Matilda lives in a tranquil primitive coastal village of no more than 60 people. They live in dirt-floored huts, and easily get all the food they need from the surrounding bountiful jungle and ocean. But in 1991, everything changes when the government chooses to blockade the island. Subsequently, all white people, including the village's teacher, missionary, doctor, etc., take the last boat off the island. All leave except Mr. Watts, an eccentric white man living a reclusive life with his black island wife in an old missionary house near the village--a house completely hidden by tall grass left uncut for decades. As the blockade progresses, all supplies slowly go scarce, then disappear altogether. There are no more canned foods, no more gasoline for the electrical generators, no more medicines. Babies start dying once again from malaria. The island children, freed from school, are aimless. The island quickly and easily returns to the way that life has been lived there for thousands of years.

The author, Lloyd Jones, knows this subject first-hand--he served as a journalist in Bougainville "where the most unspeakable things happened without once raising the ire of the outside world." And that is indeed true. I consider myself well informed on world matters, yet before I read this novel and did some background research about the setting, I had no idea about the great inhumanity that this island endured during its 10-year-long civil war. The war ultimately cost the lives of more than 11% of the island's inhabitants...and the world, for the most part, completely ignored the events.

Violence does occur in this novel, and it is "unspeakable," but the author treats this subject carefully--we are spared undue shock, and it is not the focus. This book can, and will, appeal to all readers, including young adults.

The main story begins when Mr. Watts decides to reopen the schoolroom and become the village's temporary teacher. He teaches the children by reading aloud Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations." The children quickly become totally entranced. They fall in love with the books main character, Mister Pip. Lovingly, Matilda builds an oceanfront shrine to Mister Pip--a fictional character that has become more alive to her than anything else in her impoverished environment. But this simple act of love brings violence into her life and the life of her community. The government "redskins" see the shrine from their helicopters and are sure that Mister Pip is a hidden rebel leader.

For me the most wondrous aspect of this novel is the prose--completely fresh and original. There is a rhythmic quality to the writing that is wholly new, and hard to analyze. The prose has a lovely and lyrical overall simplicity. The writing compelled me inside the story; I became part of that alien, primitive world.

There is an important moral message within this novel. According to Mr. Watts: "to be human is to be moral, and you can't have a day off when it suits." Personally, it makes me think about the fact that we are all living on a large island--planet Earth. Like Bougainville, Earth is rife with conflicts and, for me, the most important are environmental degradation and global warming. Are we going to do the moral thing, even if it doesn't suit?

So far I have read two other novels shortlisted for the 2007 Booker Prize: "On Chesil Beach: A Novel" by Iwan McEwan, and "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" by Mohsin Hamid. Each I have reviewed on Amazon, and recommend highly. They all are exceptional examples of modern literarature, and all have important messages to convey.

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Power of Storytelling, August 23, 2007

By	Eric Anderson (London, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This novel is narrated by a black girl named Matilda who is reflecting on her time growing up in an island's small village on the fringes of war-torn Papua New Guinea. The village regularly receives news and gossip about the ongoing conflict between the perceived "red-skin invading government" and the black rebels made up of many young men from local villages. They hear about the vandalism and destruction of communities as well as the gruesome murder of many innocent civilians caught in the civil war. However, Matilda is only vaguely aware of this happening in the back ground. At first, she's more concerned with the daily details of life with her protective mother (her father left them some time ago to do business in Australia), playing with her friends and wondering about the local oddity - Mr. Watts (or Pop Eye as the children call him), the only white man in the village, who is occasionally found pulling his mysterious black wife in a cart while wearing a red clown nose. When the children are left with no teacher, Mr. Watts surprisingly comes forward to educate all the local children. However, with no formal teaching skills, he spends the majority of class time reading aloud to them from the novel Great Expectations. Matilda is enraptured by the story and comes to think of its characters as her friends, finding common themes between Pip's life and her own. However, her strict Christian mother is less than pleased about the way Mr. Watts is influencing her daughter. When the fighters come to Matilda's small village, the girl's adoration for the character Pip inadvertently causes a conflict which throws the village into chaos and threatens their peaceful existence.

Jones masterfully re-creates life within this small village using straight-forward, beautifully-wrought prose. He describes the way in which storytelling can powerfully affect people, letting their thoughts and experience meld with the tales to make them wholly personal and unique. The author also manages to subtly make original and profound statements about racial differences. When scenes of horrific violence appear they are delivered with heart-breaking simplicity rather than artistic flourishes. Jones shows the slow painful destruction which war brings, exhausting and maiming the fighters, creating upheaval and chaos in the lives of ordinary citizens and tarnishing the future of the innocents. This is what makes Mister Pip a truly universal tale accessible to anyone. The thing which is shown to survive, beyond all the villagers' physical possessions, is their imagination and memory. They are what allow Matilda to reconnect with her past and rebuild her identity out of the ashes. She eventually discovers Mr. Watts has hidden stories of his own as does her beloved author Mr. Dickens. Though she endures a painful amount of hardship, it feels like a kind of victory that Matilda's own story can survive despite her childhood world being erased by the march of history.

This is only the first of New Zealand author Lloyd Jones' numerous novels to be published in the UK and US. Hopefully, his back catalogue will become available to the west soon.