MISTER PIP; Lloyd Jones; New York: Dial, 2007; 271 pgs. FictionMr. Watts becomes Mr. Pip in this story of a territorial war over a copper-rich island
in the South Seas. Mr. Watts, the only remaining white man on the island after Australian miners are driven off by "redskins" from the mainland, offers to teach school. Although the children cannot physically escape the terrors of their island, Mr. Watts offers them a way out
in a daily reading of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. Victorian London becomes their haven, and Matilda, the young female protagonist, finds herself trapped between her love of Mr. Pip's story and her mother's envy of Mr. Watts' hold over her daughter. The tension between mother and teacher, between art and life, between the redskins and the rebel rambos, between the villagers and the soldiers on both sides, suddenly erupts into horrible brutality, which Matilda's eventual escape is hard put to overcome. Mister Pip is an odd little book, with some memorable good scenes, and the striking final unity of Mr. Watts and Matilda's mother on a very elevated piece of moral ground, but for some reason its ultimate effect on the reader is a feeling of uneasiness. (In my case, anyway.)
LW
1 comment:
I recently finished reading this one. I enjoyed the first half of the book, but I was unprepared for the brutal violence toward the end and the very ending didn't feel like a satisfactory conclusion to what had come before.
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