Mr. Pip by Lloyd Jones--Forgot to post…but here it is anyway!

Here's a summary provided by Goodreads:

On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, where the teachers have fled with most everyone else, only one white man chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from Charles Dickens's classic Great Expectations.
So begins this rare, original story about the abiding strength that imagination, once ignited, can provide. As artillery echoes in the mountains, thirteen-year-old Matilda and her peers are riveted by the adventures of a young orphan named Pip in a city called London, a city whose contours soon become more real than their own blighted landscape. As Mr. Watts says, “A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe.” Soon come the rest of the villagers, initially threatened, finally inspired to share tales of their own that bring alive the rich mythology of their past. But in a ravaged place where even children are forced to live by their wits and daily survival is the only objective, imagination can be a dangerous thing.

So, my mother recommended this novel to me as a charming and heart warming read. For the most part (with a few glaring exceptions), we have similar taste in reading. But on this one, I have to say that it left me flat.

Now, I admit that I do most of my pleasure reading before signing off for the night. There are times in my life, when I fall into be, and really shouldn't be allowed to read. It is in these exhausted stupors that I read and (perhaps) don't see the novel in it's best light. I will not deny that this could be the case here, but here's what I didn't enjoy about the novel.

First, I thought that some of the characters were simplistic. The bible thumping mother…The white english teacher…

[SORRY…I WAS INTERRUPTED ON THIS BLOG ENTRY, AND NEVER FINISHED IT UP. NOW I CAN'T REMEMBER ENOUGH OF THE BOOK TO COMPLETE IT! I'M JUST GOING TO LEAVE IT LIKE THIS CUZ IT'S MY BLOG, SO I CAN!!!]