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Mister Pip | 
 enlarge | Author: Lloyd Jones
Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback
Category: Book
List Price: $12.00
Buy New: $6.70
You Save: $5.30 (44%)
New (31) Used (7) from $6.70
Avg. Customer Rating:  49 reviews
Sales Rank: 3530
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0385341075
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780385341073
ASIN: 0385341075
Publication Date: May 20, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: 100% Brand New! - Ships Today! Identical to Amazon's book in every way. Flawless! Not a cheap Remainder or Book Club Copy! *We recommend Expedited Shipping option for much faster mail delivery
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Product Description
In a novel that is at once intense, beautiful, and fablelike, Lloyd Jones weaves a transcendent story that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the power of narrative to transform our lives.
On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, where the teachers have fled with most everyone else, only one white man chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from Charles Dickens’s classic Great Expectations.
So begins this rare, original story about the abiding strength that imagination, once ignited, can provide. As artillery echoes in the mountains, thirteen-year-old Matilda and her peers are riveted by the adventures of a young orphan named Pip in a city called London, a city whose contours soon become more real than their own blighted landscape. As Mr. Watts says, “A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe.” Soon come the rest of the villagers, initially threatened, finally inspired to share tales of their own that bring alive the rich mythology of their past. But in a ravaged place where even children are forced to live by their wits and daily survival is the only objective, imagination can be a dangerous thing.
From the Hardcover edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 44 more reviews...
 Take Me Away - July 26, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Mister Pip tells shows how a story can change your life and how books can take you away in your imagination and alter your existence. Matilda lives in a simple village, violence erupts all around. Soldiers violate the village where the villagers live in fear. Mr. Watts the only white man in the small village takes over as teacher and reads Great Expectations aloud to the children. This has a great impact on Matilda and the children, and even the mothers get in on the act and share thoughts and ideas of their own to the children in the classroom a feat they undertake with great importance.
I haven't read Great Expectations and it didn't hamper my reading of this novel-although it did make me want to read it...
Great Expectations and Pip in particular, change Matilda's life - they help her survive and carry her further in life and give her a purpose. Mr. Watts is her idol and serves as a mentor.
I enjoyed the island life at it's peaceful times and the way the village Moms related knowledge to the children such as how to tell the weather from watching a crab.
This book gives us a glimpse at what it must be like to live in a village where the supplies are re-routed by rebels, where a sleeping mat or a single pencil is a most treasured item. The children in the village had never seen a building, but they try to imagine Dicken's London and it takes them away.
It does take a more violent turn toward the end but you read it and come to your own conclusions regarding the strengths and weaknesses of this book. I think you'll enjoy the experience.
 The Impact of To Kill a Mockingbird July 21, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book resonated with me like my first reading of "To Kill a Mockingbird". Llyod Jones paints a vivid picture of daily life on a small island in the Pacific. As trouble descends, the tension mounts. Each generation finds a different way of coping and the point of view of an adolescent girl adds poignancy to the tale. A wonderful book which makes the reader take a hard look at what matters at the heart of life.
Mr. Pip- a wonderful, enthralling novel July 17, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Mr. Pip is set on an island. It is a narrative of events that happened there told through the eyes of a young girl. It is a wonderful read that has sent me back to re-read Great Expectations. Loved this book!! My son discovered the book by reading the first three chapters in a small give away glossy magazine called "Bit of Lit". What a great way to sample new work!
Well written, but it doesn't quite ring true July 14, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Yes, this book is very well written. But is Matilda's voice really authentic? To some extent the maturity of the young girl's voice and her infatuation with a book from a different culture could be explained by the selection process; after all, such a story wouldn't be narrated by someone without these features, and maybe one girl out of a village could pass this unusual filter. And the enthusiasm of the other children could be partly her projection of her thoughts and enthusiasm, as it is her narrative.
Yet Mr Watts is a bit too much a caricature to elicit the reverence he receives. (And, yes, Dickens is full of caricature.) He's more whatever he needs to be for the plot, rather than a coherent whole. And why does someone so well versed in one book, no matter how much he loves it, appear not to have any other books? Having finished Great Expectations there was nothing left for his class but to start it over?
Then there are the plot devices, such as "the" book disappearing at exactly the moment when it was needed to avert disaster. (Again, yes, Dickens is full of such plot coincidences.) But does it really make sense that to show some fighters a book with a name in it would make them happy, and prevent disaster?
Even though I might have swallowed all of this, the ending just didn't ring true at all. The author's need to tie up the loose ends forced him into more compromises of his protagonist's character than it seemed worth.
Very well written, but too many distracting questions for five stars.
Secrets and Heroes July 10, 2008
As well as Matilda's coming of age, this is a story of secrets and heroes. It is jounalistic in style, which seems appropriate since Mr James is a journalist, and that helps get the reader thru the violence and sorrow of war. I learned a lot about South Pacific recent history in reading this. It's a touching, lovely tale that has tales-within-the-tales also. A great book discussion novel!
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