Mr. Pip Goes To the Tropics

Imagine Charles Dickens and J.J. Abrams decided to collaborate on a project. Then, once they had gotten started, felt stuck and asked for help from the guy who wrote Hotel Rwanda. There, now you are ready to talk about this story.

The children of a small village on an ambiguous, tropical island somewhere in the Pacific are left without a teacher when rebel invasions drive away all but one of the "whites". The only one to stay behind is Mr. Watts, an eccentic recluse best known for pulling his sad, obese wife around in a wagon whilst wearing a clown nose. The kids call him "Popeye" and live with a healthy fear of his strangeness.

Then, one day, they show up to the dilapitated schoolhouse (knowing it will be empty, but hoping differently anyway) to find Mr. Watts wearing a suit and holding a book at the front of the class. He doesn't claim to have much to offer them, but gives them the only thing he feels he has; he begins to read to them from Great Expectations. And here, a group of children just trying to survive on a war-torn island, and a young boy from 18th-century London who is reaching out for more than birth has given him, begin a journey together.

Lloyd Jones' Mr. Pip is a gift reminding you that literature is powerful, that something known silmply as a "story"can actually change one's life. This book was just what I needed to steer me out of the Nora Roberts aisle and keep me looking for "the one".