Lloyd Jones' book Mister Pip reassures us that literature and more specifically, the classics can still to this day here and around the world, be life changing and awe inspiring. One of the novel's key messages is that education is the key to saving one's life. The novel is based around Charles Dickens Great Expectations and is framed by the retelling of the story to school children. When the book is destroyed, the children, and one in particular, become obsessed with remembering the story in order to write it down again as if it will save them and their island in more ways than one.
The protagonist Matilda is a young girl living on Bougainville island, who is caught in the middle of the war that inevitably rips her life apart. Her life is changed by a white man named Mr Watts and the only book on the whole island; Great Expectations. Mr Watts starts a school on the island, and reads Great Expectations to the children. Matilda finds a special connection with Pip, and her life ends up following a similar path. She escapes the war after losing her beloved Christian mother and, sadly, Mr Watts too. Yet she has learnt and loved literature enough for it to save her. She is finally reunited with her father in Australia and her determination allows her to educate herself. Matilda goes on to New Zealand,Mr Watts home land, and goes to the trouble of finding his wife to tell her what became of Mr Watts, but finds herself with a lonely , slightly bitter woman who has tried to forget his existence in order to ease her pain, and decides it would be more decent of her not to reveal the atrocity that became of her husband.
Lloyd writes a heart warming novel, that in turn shocks and horrifies in parts, along with twists and turns. I enjoyed Lloyd's natural writing style and simple tone. He highlights childhood innocence, but not in a way that mocks or patronises islanders. He is successfully able to portray a young girl who retrospectively looks back on her traumatic island life in a way that is believable and sympathetic.
I love how this one English classic book is responsible for so much in this one short book. Dickens, a man that Matilda has and never will meet, literally saved her life with his words. Near the end of the novel, Matilda explains, "I point to the one book that supplied me with another world at a time when it was desperately needed. It gave me a friendship in Pip." I hope most people can remember that one book that made them fall in love with literature, and perhaps even, saved their life.
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