Lloyd Jones has written a book which until two thirds of the way in, I felt sure would be my book of the year. Seen through the eyes of a 14 year old islander girl in Bougainville, expatriate Mr.Watts is the only white man to remain in her village when civil war and it’s attendant atrocities begin to affect the community.
Reluctantly forced into a teacher’s role in a climate of fear and resentment, Watts does what he can to distract the children by reading them Dicken’s Great Expectations, which comes alive for them. The deadpan reporting of the brutality surrounding them left me in shock, as the awful likelihood of events started to unfold.
Towards the end, it all started to unravel for me, and I powered through to the finish, eager to be done with it. A lot of the tension had fallen away, and although Dickens story seems to be a wonderful theme to overlay and compare to the hopes and dreams of a islander community, it was pushed too far with visits to London and thesis-writing. 3 out of 5 stars.