Mr. Pip: a Great Read
I was very glad to get a copy of Lloyd Jones’ Mr Pip earlier this week. I mentioned Mr. Pip briefly in an earlier post, and with the awards ceremony for The Man Booker Prize just around the corner I thought it might be nice to give Mr. Pip the once-over.
The Man Booker Prize is the world’s leading book award and has been won previously by a New Zealander with South Island author Keri Hulme picking up the prize in 1985 for her classic novel The Bone People. Unlike the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Man Booker Prize focuses on choosing the greatest novel of the year, so if Mr. Jones were to pick it up for Mr. Pip it would be an honour indeed.
Mr. Pip is a delightful read. It is a story told through the world of Matilda, a child growing up on the Papua New Guinean Island of Bouganville. Named by the Australians who controlled the extremely valuable and productive copper mines on the islands, Matilda’s story brings us right down to earth at the very juncture between many different memes. During the period the story is set in – the 1990’s – the island was blockaded by the Papua New Guinea government as the island was rollicked by war.
Themes of innocence versus power, the effects of industry on an island people, intelligence versus christianity drive this book in a delicate and informed way that both intrigues and stimulates the mind. It would be easy given the themes that this book deals with to drop into glibbly patronizing the characters but Lloyd deals with the themes in an elegant manner that inspires the reader.
Those of you familiar with English dinosaurs may recognize the character from the title – Mr. Pip – as being drawn from Dickens’ Great Expectations. Mr Pip as a novel works in layers and the Dickensian Mr. Pip is several of these. On the island there is only one white man – a certain Mr. Watts who ends up teaching the children. Untrained as a teacher he teaches in a ‘novel’ way – by reading Mr. Pip to the kids. But in a sense he also becomes Mr. Pip. I really enjoyed the way this layering creates a sort of palimpsest enticing the reader to dig between the layers to create their own meanings and interpretations.
This book conjures up images of author such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and The Unbearable Lightness Of Being’s Milan Kundera. It does, very slightly miss the lightness that makes A Hundred Years of Solitude such a magnificent read. I think Jones is on the verge of greatness – perhaps just one novel away from creating his own masterpiece.
For a rating I will give it nine carriages of drunken salary-men on the Yamanote line out of ten.
There is a nice review from Australia’s The Age here (thats where I got the photo) and if you want to pick up a copy from Amazon then click here
One Comment, Comment or Ping
SUZANNE LAPIDES
I WAS ENTHRALLED FROM THE VERY FIRST LINE AND HELD MY BREATH UNTIL THE END. I FELT THE CHARACTERS AND SAW THE EMERGENCE OF A VOICE OF A YOUNG GIRL TO WOMANHOOD. SIMILAR IN TEXTURE TO THE CHARACTER IN THE COLOR PURPLE, I SAW THE WORLD CHANGE THE CHILD INTO A PAWN OF POWER.
Jan 13th, 2008
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