Mister Pip
by
On Bougainville Island in Papua New Guinea during the early 1990s, as civil war rages, the only remaining white-skinned inhabitant in a simple fishing village takes over as schoolmaster, using Great Expectations by Charles Dickens as his textbook. Told through the eyes of a local thirteen-year-old girl, Mister Pip (2006), by New Zealander Lloyd Jones, offers a universal vision of what literature can offer to those who are receptive—and the trouble it can seed with those who aren’t (although, readers not familiar with Great Expectations may be left in the dust). I particularly appreciated the setting and history, both little known to me.
