You know how I just said how I was uncomfortable with fictional memoirs set in recent times? Well, I guess I jumped to conclusions too soon. I read and loved Lloyd Jones' Mister Pip last week, despite the fact that it was told from the first person POV of Matilda, remembering her early teenage years on Bougainville Island during the early 1990s. Matilda recounts the story of how she and the other children of her small town are taught to love Great expectations by their makeshift teacher, the only white man around, who flickers between being a mysterious figure of fun and a defender of the village. The novel, with its story of dramatic changes in fortune, exile and loss captures the imagination of the children. As external events impact upon the village and the lives of everyone in it, the line between fiction and reality is blurred.

The book speaks powerfully about the power of books to impact lives. There’s a lovely moment when Mr Watts says to Matilda that:


Almost makes me want to go give it another chance!

Although the coming-of-age theme is likely to appeal to YA readers, I should warn that there are also very violent scenes in part of the book.

When I was reading I kept picking up sentences that sounded very Australian in construction (beats me how I did this seeing as I couldn't consciously construct one), which puzzled me as I thought the author was British. But no, Jones is a Kiwi who obviously has the good taste to sound like his near neighbours :) Seriously, though, Jones has a lovely clear writing style with realistic dialogue. I think it might have been the fable-like quality to the story that made it a break in my new-found distrust of this type of fictional memoir.

One thing this book made clear was my lack of knowledge over the civil war in Bougainville – basically I knew there had been a war that dragged on for years, there was trouble with mining as well, and that about sums it up. This was made clearer by the fact that the main character was only a couple of years older than me so I could remember what I was doing at the time. I remember my uncle and aunt lived on the island, and there being some type of trouble and my cousins coming back to Brisbane to boarding school (which, at the time, was seen a completely good thing to us kids). Why is it that I have learnt modern history of other Asian nations but not the Pacific islands? It is a gap I would like to address.

Tags: books, historical, jones