On Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

Oh sad and evocative book! I will miss reading you! I know I didn’t give you undivided attention, because I kept setting you down to read YA books.  Even though your library spine sticker says you are a YA book, you are so much more.

Do you know a dark secret? I have not even read Great Expectations, on which this book depends so deeply. I know, I mean to. I keep finding reasons to put it off. But now I really must, in honor of Mr. Watts’ great sacrifice and Mr. Jones’ great vision of the power of the imagination.

The skeptic inside me questions whether Pip and Mr. Dickens could really gain such a strong hold on the minds of island children.  I observed the alienation of Pacific readers felt toward British lit this spring (or was it the alienation of teenagers for anything difficult?).  What evocation does “lilac” or “heather” have for someone who has never experienced “Spring” or “moors?” Or is Dickens’ colleague of sorts Dickinson right about not needing to see to believe.  I didn't need to come to a Pacific island to have a vision of what the characters in Mister Pip have experienced; I didn't see the ocean myself until I was nearly grown.

And I’m not sure I share Mr. Jones’ optimism that “whatever else happened to us in our lives our voice could never be taken away from us.”  Daniel loses his voice. Matilda’s mother loses hers. I suppose their bravery will live on in stories on the island, but will the intent of their sacrifice truly be comprehended?

Nonetheless, it is a tale beautifully told, and I’m glad I spent some hours in that place, becoming a young, black island girl, just as surely as she took on the identity of a young, poor British boy.