Mister Pip. by Lloyd Jones -- completereview.com

1990s in blockaded Bougainville, island off Papa New Guinea. north of Australia. may appear to be yet another yes book abt redemptive pwr lit & imagntn, cleverly drawing parallels btw a classic & life. but..
it's a wonderful, if heart-breaking (shattering, really) story.

Mr.Watts eventually shares his own history and how he came to live there with Grace, the smart local girl who went abroad to study but came back as something of a baffling disappointment.

ringing this up in a mailordr, I opened to penult chp, where narrator Matilda now grown up goes to talk with Mrs Watts in Wellington New Zealand (where Mr Watts had lived his life before came to the island, and also where the author Lloyd Jones lives). Matilda tells Mrs W that her husband had taught her as a kid on the island. Mrs Watts said, then you know that women Grace? who, we learn, lived next door to them, and then was sent to a mental institution.
I went to the beginning of the novel, and got what I wanted to know: Grace and Mr Watts lived together on the island. and jumping in the book, I see that she died there. so I suppose he was able to take her out of the mental institutn and go with her back to her island, where he then remained as a rare white person, and during the blockade he taught the children.
but I don't know if the book ever tells us much else about Grace, in what way and why she went 'mad.' Mrs Watts tells Matilda that her husband and Grace were in a play together, where she played Queen of Sheba, and then Grace couldn't or wouldn't stop being Queen of Sheba. in the play, Mr Watts wore a red nose and pulled Grace in a trolley -- which is what the novel begins with, Matilda saying how these two used to do this on the island, enact this scene. and the islanders would watch.


This review here is notably good. I've seen this site before. today it strikes me as a very good site. Complete Review - Welcome to the Complete Review
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and their sources are fine, look into:
Booklist - Financial Times - New Statesman - The New York Sun this is the paper Mrs Selle praises. conservative. with very good arts coverage, it seems.

The Guardian - The Times - The Telegraph - The Independent - The Spectator - The Scotsman

The Australian - New Zealand Listener - Sydney Morning Herald - Salient - Paul's Writing Blog - - notebook - writ small