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4.11 AVERAGE
4.11 AVERAGE
Fantastic (although very sad) read. The horror that this man went through as a child is unimaginable to most of us yet somehow he came through it all.
admittedly, i was reading this during a very stressful job situation, so i was prob less patient than i normally would have been. personally, i liked what is the what better.
When we will learned from our horrible mistakes. So many still suffering.
Heartbreaking story
Heartbreaking story
A compelling and vivid portrayal of a very real situation. I think the best endorsement for this book came from one of my sixth grade students. He said this book was really good, and taught him that war is not fun.
Very good read for my AtW challenge (Sierra Leone). I listened to the audiobook narrated by the author, and his story was compelling despite some gaps. For example, his rehabilitation seemed so gradual that it felt like one minute he was a drugged-up boy fighting former rebels in the program, and the next minute he is asked to talk about his experiences as a recovered child soldier. I also think it was interesting how people in the rehabilitation program constantly told him that it (e.g., the war, his killings) was not his fault, but it took a long time for him (understandably) to even feel guilt.
This was a very powerful story. I hope he will write about a sequel about the next leg of his journey. I felt like it ended abruptly. An easy read.
I feel terrible giving this anything other than 5 stars. The themes and subject matter deserve 5 stars. People should know about this history. This memoir might not be the best place for that. Way too many repetitive details. I really loved the ending, and some of the internal thinking passages, but I didn’t need to know, “I got up,” or “we ate some rice.”
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
fast-paced
One of my favorite memoirs! My first recommendation when someone asks for a memoir rec.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, War
I'm not sure how to review this book. The subject matter is so important, and Beah's courage and honesty in telling his story so significant, that it seems the book should get five stars based on those factors alone. It is remarkable enough that Beah should have survived his ordeals as a child soldier, let alone healed to the point where he felt able to write about those experiences; it seems unreasonable to also hold his memoir to a literary standard that it does not quite meet. Suggesting that this memoir might have been written differently also feels uncomfortably like trying to tell Beah how he should respond to his own trauma, something I have neither the right nor the desire to do.
And yet, and yet....
For all the courage on display here (and Beah's tremendous personal courage really does shine through in this narrative), it feels like this book could have and should have done more. I wish I had felt more deeply drawn into the story, viscerally involved, implicated in the horror. The emotions aroused by a story like this should be complex, powerful, and difficult. Instead, this book allowed me to stand on the sidelines, shaking my head and saying, "Oh, how terrible!"
Beah's story can be divided into three sections. In the first, he flees and hides from both the Sierra Leone Army and the rebel forces, either of which might kill him or force him to fight. The second section covers the period after he has been forced into the army at age thirteen, and spends his days in a haze of violence and drugs. The third section, describing his rehabilitation and eventual flight from Sierra Leone, is the most effective part of the book. Beah shares more of his inner life during this period, and vividly evokes his struggle to return to normal life. Somehow, seeing the difficulty of recovering from his experiences in the army made the true nature of his ordeal feel more real than when he described the experiences themselves.
There can be no doubt that this is a memoir of deep trauma. It seems that describes his life as a soldier in simplistic, matter-of-fact language because he is not able to relive that time any more deeply than that. I would have liked a depiction of Beah's childhood before it was destroyed by the civil war, but it seems clear that he can hardly bring himself to remember that part of his life and measure the true extent of his loss. As a human, I can understand and respect why he is unwilling and unable to dig down into this material. But in literary terms, I think the book needed him to go there.
And yet, and yet....
For all the courage on display here (and Beah's tremendous personal courage really does shine through in this narrative), it feels like this book could have and should have done more. I wish I had felt more deeply drawn into the story, viscerally involved, implicated in the horror. The emotions aroused by a story like this should be complex, powerful, and difficult. Instead, this book allowed me to stand on the sidelines, shaking my head and saying, "Oh, how terrible!"
Beah's story can be divided into three sections. In the first, he flees and hides from both the Sierra Leone Army and the rebel forces, either of which might kill him or force him to fight. The second section covers the period after he has been forced into the army at age thirteen, and spends his days in a haze of violence and drugs. The third section, describing his rehabilitation and eventual flight from Sierra Leone, is the most effective part of the book. Beah shares more of his inner life during this period, and vividly evokes his struggle to return to normal life. Somehow, seeing the difficulty of recovering from his experiences in the army made the true nature of his ordeal feel more real than when he described the experiences themselves.
There can be no doubt that this is a memoir of deep trauma. It seems that describes his life as a soldier in simplistic, matter-of-fact language because he is not able to relive that time any more deeply than that. I would have liked a depiction of Beah's childhood before it was destroyed by the civil war, but it seems clear that he can hardly bring himself to remember that part of his life and measure the true extent of his loss. As a human, I can understand and respect why he is unwilling and unable to dig down into this material. But in literary terms, I think the book needed him to go there.