Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

A surprising, heartbreaking and yet heartwarming story about a village of people in a tropical island torn by civil war who are kept strengthened when the only white person, an apparent gentleman, acts as a teacher and reads aloud Great Expectations during the time everyone else, other than the villagers, has left. Yet, there is more...torture, burning, looting, death, the realities of civil war. My husband and I kept trying to figure out where it was, or when. We thought maybe an island North of New Guinea because of the copper mine and the references to New Zealand and Australia. To say this is to say so little, it's ridiculous. The book reached into the depths of me, and the reality is I was mesmerized totally. It had great power in many dimensions. When the book was burned with the village, Mr. Watts says, "We have all lost our possessions and many of us our homes, but these losses, severe though they may seem, remind us of what no persona can take, and that is our minds and our imaginations." and when one of the children asked what an imagination was, he asked them to close their eyes and say their own name to themselves. ....."Another thing," Mr. Watts said, "No one in the history of your short lives has used the same voice as you with which to say your name. This is yours. Your special gift that no one can every take from you. This is what our friend and colleague Mrs. Dickens used to construct his stories with..." As he continues, they begin again..." I can't really explain.
Powerful, poignant, affecting...