Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Shattered childhoods: 20 books

One title on AbeBooks' list of 20 books of shattered childhoods:
Mister Pip
Lloyd Jones
(2006)

Thirteen-year-old Matilda sees her South Pacific island wrecked by the violence of a civil war in the 1990s. During the chaos, the island′s only white person begins teaching Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations in the school and, of course, there is a massive disconnection between Victorian England and a small island near Papua New Guinea. The mother-daughter relationship is also vital in this moving novel that won the Commonwealth Writers Prize.
Read about another book on the list. [h/t to escapegrace]

--Marshal Zeringue