Lloyd Jones: Mister Pip

[Stewart]

Lloyd Jones Mister Pipi (2007) has picked up its fair share of prizes since it's release, notably the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book and the fiction half of the Kiriyama Prize. Add to that its shortlisting for the Man Booker Prize. And with strong writing telling a story that pushes the reader to all manner of emotional experiences, it certainly stakes its claim to be a modern classic.

Set in a blockaded Bougainville in 1991, during rebel uprising, the narrator Matilda tells us of how the one remaining white man in the province, Mr Watts, reopens the school and introduces them to “the greatest novel by the greatest English writer of the nineteenth century.” Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens. Each day he reads a chapter from the book, encouraging the children to use their imaginations to transport them back Victorian England, a place they’ll never know. And when the book gets lost, it is the imagination that is used to recall the novel, helping them to rebuild their shattered lives.

There are some books where I feel that having knowledge of another text would be useful prior to reading (e.g. Icelandic sagas for Halldór Laxness, or even Jane Eyre, prior to Wide Sargasso Sea) but with Mister Pip I didn’t feel less ignorant of the story due to my ignorance of Great Expectations. In fact, it put me more on a level with the children coming to this story for the first time, the snippets given eking out the story in my head.

Although it’s set in the real world, there are times when the book’s tropical setting seems almost mythic, not least because of the isolated setting, but through the folklore shared by the kids’ mothers:

We heard about an island where the kids sit in a stone canoe and learn sacred sea chants by heart. We heard you can sing a song to make an orange tree grow. We heard about songs that worked like medicine. For example, you can sing a certain one to get rid of hiccups. There are even songs to get rid of sores and boils.

Stories are what it’s all about, their power to engage the imagination, their indestructibility, and how one’s voice, written or spoken, is a unique thing that can’t be taken away. In many senses, Mister Pip has the feel of a book for children, although that notion is quashed as the book soon darkens, with scenes reminiscent of Uzodinma Iweala’s Beasts Of No Nation, only told from the other perspective.

The prose is wonderful, Matilda’s narration in harmony with the lazy days feel of island life, yet shot through with observations of the harsher aspects of life:

We could see the beach palms spreading up to a blue sky. And a turquoise sea so still we hardly noticed it. Halfway to the horizon we could see a redskins’ gunboat. It was like a grey sea mouse - it crawled along with its guns aimed at us. In the direction of the hills we heard sporadic gunfire. We were used to that sound - sometimes it was the rebels testing their restored rifles, and besides, we knew it was a longer way off than what it sounded. We had come to know the amplifying effects of water, so the gunfire just merged with the background chorus of the grunting pigs and shrieking birds.

The characters step off the page in their own ways, be it their need to understand the world around them or through enigmatic qualities. Why does Mr Watt, for example, sometimes wear a red nose? And no matter how comic or strange someone appears, they’re also steeped in sorrow.

While not a debut novel (that was published in 1985) Mister Pip is Lloyd Jones’s first to be published in the UK and it’s an accomplished creation, and surely destined for classic status. There’s joy, there’s wonder, there’s fear, sadness, shock. There’s Dickens. There’s so much more. Its success should hopefully see his back catalogue - and future novels - published in Britain as, for once, I wouldn’t mind keeping up with the Jones’s.

[Funhouse]

Originally Posted by Stewart

While not a debut novel (that was published in 1985) Mister Pip is Lloyd Jones’s first to be published in the UK and it’s an accomplished creation, and surely destined for classic status. There’s joy, there’s wonder, there’s fear, sadness, shock. There’s Dickens. There’s so much more. Its success should hopefully see his back catalogue - and future novels - published in Britain as, for once, I wouldn’t mind keeping up with the Jones’s.

Actually, although widely published in the British press, this nugget of information is incorrect. Jones' novel Biografi was published in the UK (and the US) in the early 1990s.

And yes, I fully agree about the merits of Mister Pip. It's a wonderful novel. And it's good to see New Zealand literature getting some international attention.

[Stewart]

Originally Posted by Funhouse

Actually, although widely published in the British press, this nugget of information is incorrect. Jones' novel Biografi was published in the UK (and the US) in the early 1990s.

Looking at this list of his works from the the University of Auckland, it would seem his first was Gilmore's Dairy in 1985.

[Funhouse]

Originally Posted by Stewart

Looking at this list of his works from the the University of Auckland, it would seem his first was Gilmore's Dairy in 1985.

Sorry Stewart, I didn't make myself clear. The mistaken information was not the timing of his first novel but the suggestion that Mister Pip was his first novel to be published in the UK. It wasn't. Biografi was.

[Stewart]

Ah, okay. Thanks for that. I took the earlier novel to be by a different Lloyd Jones, one from Wales and author of Mr Vogel and Mr Cassini. I predict a few disgruntled Amazon buyers who don't spot the difference.

[Mirabell]

It is very nice, I agree, I was quite moved and I can see that not knowing GE could be a fun experience. However, on rereading it last week, I was somehow disappointed. It is quite a thin book, not just physically. It works very well, but I get the nagging feeling that this is what it's constructed for. Everything is just good enough or deep enough to make the construct work. On reflection, this might be a rather soulless affair, I'm afraid of reading the book a third time and coming to just that conclusion. Because, yes, I like that book, still.

[Stewart]

Originally Posted by Mirabell

...on rereading it last week, I was somehow disappointed. It is quite a thin book, not just physically. It works very well, but I get the nagging feeling that this is what it's constructed for. Everything is just good enough or deep enough to make the construct work. On reflection, this might be a rather soulless affair...

Considering this, that's kind of what I think would happen were I to look at Mister Pip again. His back catalogue, on the back of this book, is finally seeing itself arriving in UK stores, but I can't say, after my initial excitement on reading Mister Pip, that I want to go and read them, or indeed it again.

[Sophia]

Lloyd's first book was Gimours Dairy in 1985, Biographi was the next one after that

[Eric]

Thanks, Sophia. You should know best, given your parentage! But the Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature is also enlightening, regarding your father's work and even gives Biografi a separate entry.

Mixing fact and fiction was once termed "faction". The Swedish author Per Olov Enquist did that with his novel / reportage The Legionnaires in 1968. While Lloyd Jones takes Albania, Enquist chose the Baltics.

Quote from ther internet:

faction, a short-lived portmanteau word denoting works that present verifiably factual contents in the form of a fictional novel, as in Norman Mailer's The Armies of the Night (1968). Although still sometimes used by journalists, the term suffers from the disadvantage of already meaning something else (i.e. a conspiratorial group within a divided organization).

Source: faction: Definition, Synonyms and Much More from Answers.com