Booktopia Comments
* Winner, Commonwealth Writers' Prize
* Winner, Kiriyama Prize for Fiction
* Readers Choice Award, Montana Fiction Award and Montana Medal for Fiction, 2007 Montana Awards
* Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize
Product Description
You cannot pretend to read a book. Your eyes will give you away. So will your breathing. A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe. The house can catch alight and a reader deep in a book will not look up until the wallpaper is in flames.
After the trouble starts and the soldiers arrive on Matilda's tropical island, only one white person stays behind. Mr Watts wears a red nose and pulls his wife around on a trolley. The kids call him Pop Eye. But there is no one else to teach them their lessons. Mr Watts begins to read aloud to the class from his battered copy of Great Expectations, a book by his friend Mr Dickens.
Soon Dickens' hero Pip starts to come alive for Matilda. She writes his name in the sand and decorates it with shells. Pip becomes as real to her as her own mother, and the greatest friendship of her life has begun.
But Matilda is not the only one who believes in Pip. And, on an island at war, the power of the imagination can be a dangerously provocative thing.
'Mister Pip is a rare, original and truly beautiful novel. It reminds us that every act of reading and telling is a transformation, and that stories, even painful ones, may carry possibilities of redemption.'
— Gail Jones
'As compelling as a fairytale—beautiful, shocking and profound.'
— Helen Garner
'Roll the drums. Flourish the trumpets. Release the pigeons. Yes, the fanfare accompanying Lloyd Jones' new novel is well-deserved…It reads like the effortless soar and dip of a grand piece of music, thrilling singular voices, the darker, moving chorus, the blend of the light and shade, the thread of grief urgent in every beat and the occasional faint, lingering note of hope…Jones is matchless…Read this novel and Mr Watts, and perhaps Matilda, will migrate instantly into your heart.'
— Age
'A poignant and impressive work which can take its place alongside the classic novels of adolescence.’
— Times Literary Supplement
‘Lloyd Jones brings to life the transformative power of fiction…This is a beautiful book, It is tender, multi-layered and redemptive’
— Sunday Times
Industry Reviews
`Sad, beautiful, poignant, moving and honest, this is a remarkable book.' * Good Book Guide * * London Review of Books * `A novel about reading and writing and their impact on people's lives that can be read with pleasure by someone who has never known the power of Charles Dickens, or Great Expectations, and still make them hunger for more. . . Its fable-like quality is spellbinding; the depth of its insights compelling.' * Canberra Times * `Lloyd Jones brings to life the transformative power of fiction ... The experience of reading in this book is tangible ...This is a beautiful book, It is tender, multi-layered and redemptive' -- Lucy Atkins * Sunday Times * `Jones tactfully handles the confrontation between Mr Watts and Matilda's mother, aware that the mesmeric qualities of literature can be dangerous as well as redemptive. Only through Great Expectations does Matilda learn to see grown-ups as they really are. Morally subtle, Mister Pip has none of the arid cleverness that mars novels about books, making it a worthy winner of this year's Commonwealth Writers' Prize.' -- Jonathan Beckman * Daily Mail * `A little Gauguin, a bit of Lord Jim, the novel's lyricism evokes great beauty and great pain.' * Kirkus Reviews * `This prizewinning novel by New Zealand author Jones is an eloquent homage to the power of storytelling.' -- Joanne Wilkinson * STARRED Review, Booklist * `As compelling as a fairytale-beautiful, shocking and profound.' -- Helen Garner `For so brutal a reminder of atrocities so close to home, this is still an oddly satisfying book that goes on resonating long after you get to the end.' -- Kerryn Goldsworthy * Sydney Morning Herald * Jones' epigraph is Umberto Eco's "Characters migrate". They do. Read this novel and Mr Watts, and perhaps Matilda, will migrate instantly into your heart.' -- Helen Elliott * Age * `Matilda is in the tradition of Holden Caulfield and Huck Finn, conjuring up an adult world before she can fully understand it; and Mister Pip is a poignant and impressive work which can take its place alongside the classic novels of adolescence.' * Times Literary Supplement * `New Zealand writer Lloyd Jones's spare, haunting fable explores the power and limitations of art...' * Washington Post * `One of the best books of the year! Poetic, heartbreaking, surprising. Matilda is a young girl in Bougainville, a tropical island where the horror of civil war lurks. Mr. Watts, the only white person, is the self appointed teacher of the tiny school where the only textbook is the Dickens novel Great Expectations. Storytelling, imagination, courage, beauty, memories and sudden violence are the main elements of this extraordinary book.' -- Isabel Allende
