Mister Pip (2006) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit

Write a ridiculously simplified synopsis.

Characters/People edit see section history

• Matilda: Narrator
• Mr. Watts: Teacher
• Grace Watts: Mr Watts' wife
• Dolores: Matilda's mother
• Gilbert: Fisherman's son
• Mr. Charles Dickens: Victorian author
• Daniel: Classmate
• Mabel: Classmate
• Celia: Friend of Matilda
• Joe Gargery: The blacksmith, Pip's uncle
• Mister Pip: A character from Great Expectations
• Mrs. Siep: Friend of Dolores
• Mr. Jaggers: The Lawyer
• Magwitch: The convict from Great Expectations
• Mrs. Masoi: Gilbert's mother
• Sam: Add a description of this character.
• Tom
• Black: The dog

Quotes edit see section history

• “Thanks to dreams, in the history of the galaxy the world has been reinvented more often than there are stars.”

• “I had found a new friend. The surprising thing is where I'd found him - not up a tree or sulking in the shade, or splashing around in one of the hill streams, but in a book. No one had told us kids to look there for a friend.”

• “She <Mrs Siep> spoke from some inner calm place which my own mum did not know how to locate.”

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• For me, Matilda, Great Expectations is such a book. It gave me permission to change my life.”

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• He said that to be human is to be moral, and you cannot have a day off when it suits. My brave mum had known this when she stepped forward to proclaim herself God’s witness to the cold-blooded butchery of her old enemy, Mr. Watts.

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• He was whatever he needed to be, what we asked him to be. Perhaps there are lives like that—they pour into whatever space we have made ready for them to fill. We needed a teacher, Mr. Watts became that teacher. We needed a magician to conjure up other worlds, and Mr. Watts had become that magician. When we needed a savior, Mr. Watts had filled that role. When the redskins required a life, Mr. Watts had given himself.

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• my Mr. Dickens had taught every one of us kids that our voice was special, and we should remember this whenever we used it, and remember that whatever else happened to us in our lives our voice could never be taken away from us.

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• That is when I learned there is a place for embellishment after all. But it belongs to life—not to literature.

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• We had grown up believing white to be the color of all the important things, like ice cream, aspirin, ribbon, the moon, the stars. White stars and a full moon were more important when my grandfather grew up than they are now that we have generators.

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• PEOPLE SOMETIMES ASK ME “Why Dickens?,” which I always take to be a gentle rebuke. I point to the one book that supplied me with another world at a time when it was desperately needed. It gave me a friend in Pip. It taught me you can slip under the skin of another just as easily as your own, even when that skin is white and belongs to a boy alive in Dickens’ England. Now, if that isn’t an act of magic I don’t know what is.

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• “Money and social standing don’t come into it. We are talking about qualities. And those qualities are easily identified. A gentleman will always do the right thing.”

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• In recalling these events I do not feel anything. Forgive me if I lost the ability to feel anything that day. It was the last thing to be taken from me after my pencil and calendar and shoes, the copy of Great Expectations, my sleeping mat and house, after Mr. Watts and my mother. I do not know what you are supposed to do with memories like these. It feels wrong to want to forget. Perhaps this is why we write these things down, so we can move on.

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• This wasn’t Mr. Watts’ story we were hearing at all. It wasn’t his or Grace’s story. It was a made-up story to which we’d all contributed. Mr. Watts was shining our experience of the world back at us. We had no mirrors. These things and anything else that might have said something about who we were and what we believed had been thrown onto the bonfire. I have come to think that Mr. Watts was giving back something of ourselves in the shape of a story.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

show spoilers

• Bougainville: This Pacific island off Papua New Guinea is the setting for the story and home to most of the main characters.
• England: Place talked about and visited by a few. A far away place, strange culture, syntax and expressions
• London
• Australia
• Townsville
• Good Book
• Arawa
• Wellington, New Zealand: Where Mr. Watts is from.

First Sentence edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Lloyd Jones (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Montana Medal (2007: Fiction, #1)
• Montana New Zealand Book Award (2007: Fiction, #1)
• Readers' Choice Award (New Zealand) (2007, #1)
• Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (2007: Overall, #1)
• Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (2007: South East Asia and Pacific)
• Man Booker Prize (Finalist, 2007, shortlist)
• Alex Awards (2008)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PR9639.3.J644M57
• Dewey: 823.914

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › World Literature › United States
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary

Movie Connections edit see section history

• Mister Pip (IMDb): 2012

Books That Influenced This Book edit see section history