Conrad's review
Mister Pip
by Lloyd Jones
You're hilarious. I love a stinging review. There is an art to tragic deadpan that can be both deeply moving or profoundly funny and it sounds like he missed it. I also love the phrase: uniquely unenlightening because it's so cheeky.
About teaching, though. Erasmus was the literary and academic hermits hermit and I have always had a place for Steve Martin because, well...he's hot, but Mother Teresa scares me. I unfortunately have my own schmaltzy version of teaching and it does, of course, include the Erasmus/Martin dynamic, but as a third choice, it might begin to lean more toward Ghandi and less toward Mum Teresa, who, by the way, just had her diaries released and let me just say: nihilism has a new spin and its creepy looking.
Anyway. Nice review and look forward to reading more because I don't have time to read lately which is depressing me and this is the best way to tap into what's going on.
As I started to write a review of this book, I was having a difficult time capturing in words why I didn't care for it. Then I read your review and you perfectly nailed the reasons this book falls flat. I had a really hard time getting into the first half because of the Dead Poet's Society sentimentality, although I thought it picked up towards the end - mainly because the story took on a bit more personality. I too, was really surprised by the violent conclusion. However, the stilted hollow, overly mature (and yet someone childish) narrative voice really didn't suit the main character. Also I thought the narration had a distinctly masculine flavor to it. If you changed the narrator's name to Jack, it wouldn't make any difference in the text. I found this a little strange as repeatedly through the book I kept forgetting the character was female. Anyways, great review.
I wasn't as bothered by the narrative voice as you were, although I tend to agree about the sentimentalized teacher dynamic - what preserves it from being totally mawkish in this book, I think, is how Mr. Watts maintains - like Miss Havisham - the appropriate distance of the truly strange. In other words, it's not a mawkish emotional relationship between Watts and Matilda; he's more an object of fascination and bewilderment than a mentor/teacher figure. He functions as Miss Havisham to Matilda's Pip, although he's not as interesting or well-drawn a character as Havisham is. But the abandoned schoolhouse overgrown with vines, to my mind, clearly corresponds to Satis House.
Conrad's review
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
Conrad's review
rating:
bookshelves:
fiction,
owned,
pacific-islands
This is when two and a half stars would be handy. I really couldn't stand this book for a couple of reasons when I first started reading it. It has a narrative voice that sounds like an oldish adult trying to sound like a five year old. Jones writes in staccato sentences that are occasionally poetic but more often tend toward a voice I will refer to as Tragic Deadpan, a voice that was also used to disastrous effect in Octavia Butler's writing. It is uniquely unenlightening on the plight of the Papuan masses, though I can now rest assured that I should be glad not to be a member of that immiserated bunch. Worst of all, toward the beginning the novel reads like Dead Poets Society-type teacher schmaltz. (Being a teacher does sensitize one to the presumption that a good teacher is a combination of Erasmus, Steve Martin, and Mother Teresa.)
But the ending was really good, in an inconclusive, life-sucks, Coetzee kind of way. I wasn't expecting it to go in quite the direction that it did; ...more
But the ending was really good, in an inconclusive, life-sucks, Coetzee kind of way. I wasn't expecting it to go in quite the direction that it did; ...more
You're hilarious. I love a stinging review. There is an art to tragic deadpan that can be both deeply moving or profoundly funny and it sounds like he missed it. I also love the phrase: uniquely unenlightening because it's so cheeky.
About teaching, though. Erasmus was the literary and academic hermits hermit and I have always had a place for Steve Martin because, well...he's hot, but Mother Teresa scares me. I unfortunately have my own schmaltzy version of teaching and it does, of course, include the Erasmus/Martin dynamic, but as a third choice, it might begin to lean more toward Ghandi and less toward Mum Teresa, who, by the way, just had her diaries released and let me just say: nihilism has a new spin and its creepy looking.
Anyway. Nice review and look forward to reading more because I don't have time to read lately which is depressing me and this is the best way to tap into what's going on.
As I started to write a review of this book, I was having a difficult time capturing in words why I didn't care for it. Then I read your review and you perfectly nailed the reasons this book falls flat. I had a really hard time getting into the first half because of the Dead Poet's Society sentimentality, although I thought it picked up towards the end - mainly because the story took on a bit more personality. I too, was really surprised by the violent conclusion. However, the stilted hollow, overly mature (and yet someone childish) narrative voice really didn't suit the main character. Also I thought the narration had a distinctly masculine flavor to it. If you changed the narrator's name to Jack, it wouldn't make any difference in the text. I found this a little strange as repeatedly through the book I kept forgetting the character was female. Anyways, great review.
I wasn't as bothered by the narrative voice as you were, although I tend to agree about the sentimentalized teacher dynamic - what preserves it from being totally mawkish in this book, I think, is how Mr. Watts maintains - like Miss Havisham - the appropriate distance of the truly strange. In other words, it's not a mawkish emotional relationship between Watts and Matilda; he's more an object of fascination and bewilderment than a mentor/teacher figure. He functions as Miss Havisham to Matilda's Pip, although he's not as interesting or well-drawn a character as Havisham is. But the abandoned schoolhouse overgrown with vines, to my mind, clearly corresponds to Satis House.