I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Beg, borrow or buy a copy and then pass it on to a friend. This came to me all the way from Cambodia, no less. R has been travelling and picked it up second-hand in Sihanouk Ville for $4. It’s written by a New Zealand author who’s also a winner of the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize as well as several other awards. It is haunting, beautiful, shocking and sad and so wonderful I want everyone to read it.
The book is set on an island named Bougainville, somewhere in the tropics where a civil war is raging. As the island is methodically isolated from the rest of the world and anyone who can has left, Mr Watts [the last remaining white person] takes it upon himself to be the island’s schoolteacher. The only textbook he has is Dickens’ ‘Great Expectations’ and through a mixture of storytelling and imagination, he teaches the children so much more than literature.
The book is read through the eyes of Matilda, a young girl whose story is in turn charming, poetic, funny, painful and poignant. The violence of the war and the casual acts of hate and bloodshed are shocking, particularly seen from Matilda’s viewpoint. Yet, this is a book of hope and as Matilda follows Pip’s story, so we too grow up with them both. Her character is neat and delightful, her relationships with Mr Watts, her mother and those around her, fascinating. Mr Watts too is an enigma, gently revealed through Matilda’s eyes and those of the island. This is a book that stays with you. It made me want to revisit Great Expectations and to re-read this one, once more thereafter.
ISBN: 978-1-921520-24-2 · £7.99 · Paperback
