In a novel that is at once intense, beautiful, and fablelike, Lloyd
Jones weaves a transcendent story that celebrates the resilience of the
human spirit and the power of narrative to transform our lives.
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.
