A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah (nonfiction)
If you had pressed me, I might have been able to find Sierra Leone on a map before I read this book. After reading the book, I can not only find the country but can also describe what this kid had to do to get out of it. The book is technically a memoir, but it reads like an action movie. Ishmael and his family are in the midst of civil unrest (a gentle description of the war ravaging the country), and they end up on the run in the forests to try to escape the rebels who are burning and butchering villages and people. It will break your heart to read what this 12 year old boy endured. Eventually, separated from his family and alone, he joins the army side of the war (as a 13 year old), and begins to wield an AK-47 with great skill. Beah desribes the first time he killed a man (several, actually), and then it becomes a blur. He morphs into one of the best child soldiers the army ever recruited, and he does not react emotionally to the murdering and killing he and the other children commit. One scene in particular is difficult to read: child soldiers from the army try to kill child soldiers from the rebels.
The latter part of the book is devoted to how Beah is removed from the army by UNICEF workers and to how he adjusts to civilian life. Essentially, by the time UNICEF rescues him, he is brainwashed and must be de-programmed. It's especially tough to read because you know full well more children died in the war than were rescued by UNICEF.
I thought the book dragged on a bit in the beginning since Beah's story is mostly about how he and a band of boys hid in the forests, but it almost seems an insult to Beah and the others to think of the story as "dragging." Many of the other boys did not become real people that I cared about--but that's not because of Beah's narrative. It's because they did not live long enough for Beah to include them much.
The story is a first person account (of course--it's a memoir), but I would like to have read what the UNICEF workers were thinking when they met and worked with Beah. I would like to have known more about the people who helped him back to normalcy and about his new white mother in America. However, it is sufficient to know he was given a chance at a different life than the one most of the children in Sierra Leone faced. It's too hard, too heartbreaking, to think about them.
The latter part of the book is devoted to how Beah is removed from the army by UNICEF workers and to how he adjusts to civilian life. Essentially, by the time UNICEF rescues him, he is brainwashed and must be de-programmed. It's especially tough to read because you know full well more children died in the war than were rescued by UNICEF.
I thought the book dragged on a bit in the beginning since Beah's story is mostly about how he and a band of boys hid in the forests, but it almost seems an insult to Beah and the others to think of the story as "dragging." Many of the other boys did not become real people that I cared about--but that's not because of Beah's narrative. It's because they did not live long enough for Beah to include them much.
The story is a first person account (of course--it's a memoir), but I would like to have read what the UNICEF workers were thinking when they met and worked with Beah. I would like to have known more about the people who helped him back to normalcy and about his new white mother in America. However, it is sufficient to know he was given a chance at a different life than the one most of the children in Sierra Leone faced. It's too hard, too heartbreaking, to think about them.
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