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This story is told to us by 13-year-old Matilda, who lives on an island near Papua New Guinea that is engulfed in a civil war. As the men in the village leave to join the rebel cause, the children are left with an eccentric white man who decides to step in as their teacher. Mr. Watts reads to the children each day from Dickens’s Great Expectations, and this story will affect all of their lives. This powerful story was written by a writer from New Zealand and I very highly recommend it.
audio book. Not sure how I felt about this book about a properly quirky English gentleman and scholar and his native wife living in an exotic and dangerous setting, but I do remember the feeling the book gave me, which often happens with audio books. He didn't seem like a character who would fit well in any world, so he created a world for himself and lived the sort of life he imagined for himself from his books. Altogether an odd yet charming book.
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