Reviews - A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

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A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

The story of a child soldier in Sierra Leone, this is very difficult to read. I would venture to guess that most Americans have no idea of the atrocities that have occurred in Sierra Leone. Fortunately, this young man survived the war, was able to leave the army, and eventually emigrate to the United States. The style of writing is not especially good, but I can overlook that because of his lack of education and that the book is not written in his native tongue. However, I think his editor did the book a disservice. The narrative really needed some tightening and a better chronology. It was very disjointed and I was confused about whether some events were current or flashbacks from his past.

nellebelle's review against another edition

4.75

dark emotional informative reflective sad fast-paced

noonz_08's review against another edition

3.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

prezlazulimg's review against another edition

5.0

dark emotional inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

He inspired me in High School

canuck_ley's review against another edition

3.0

I first heard of Ishmael Beah on Biblioglobalâs blog, who is also doing the Global reading challenge (Though she is way ahead of me, lol). I had happened to stumble across her blog, saw A Long Way Gone & knew that this was a story that I too wanted to read. (at the time I didnât read her post about the book because I didnât want to take the chance of ruining anything)

I have to admit that I came away from reading A Long Way Gone feeling uncomfortable & somewhat unsettled, but not for the right reasons. This should be a story which shocks the reader. A story that unsettles the reader because of what a horrible experience this must have been & I somehow feel that there should have been a bit of sadness (if not profound sadness) about what Beah & the other child soldiers went through. Only, that wasnât it. That wasnât why I was feeling unsettled & uncomfortable. This should have been a difficult, uncomfortable read, but it was far from that. I flew through A Long Way Gone & was pretty ambivalent about what I was reading.

Each evening while we were preparing dinner my OH would ask me how I was getting on with the book & I didnât know what to tell him, how to explain what I was feeling. Only a few minutes ago I read Biblioglobalâs review of A Long Way Gone & was finally able to put a finger on it. She writes:

Unfortunately Iâve learned that there is some controversy over the accuracy of some parts of the book. From what Iâve read, there do seem to be valid doubts about certain aspects, in particular the length of time that Ishmael Beah was actually a child soldier. (The Village Voice has a good overview of the controversy. http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-03-18/news/boy-soldier/full) There are a lot of understandable reasons why he might have exaggerated or confused his story so I donât want to pass judgement about it. It does make me sad though. The book would still be very powerful, even if he was a soldier for âonlyâ a few months rather than two years, but the suspicion of such a major inaccuracy detracts from the book, at least for me.

Iâve since read the Village Voiceâs article & it voices the same concerns I had about a lot of the book, but had been unable to articulate to my OH. For instance, why is there so much of the book dedicated to telling about Beahâs life before the rebels destroyed his village and after he was released by the Army, but so little time dedicated to the telling of his time as an actual soldier? The lack of dates to have a reference of time was another one. I found myself constantly wondering as I read the book how long things went on, when did this happen, when did that happen? There are virtually no dates mentioned so keeping track of the time-frame is impossible. To me this just didnât sit well considering Beah claims to have a photographic memory & remembers everything with such clarity (even though he was high as a kite most of the time).

But the thing I found hardest to reconcile was the supposed actions of the UNICEF team at the Benin Home. Beah describes an incident where soon after his arrival at the camp another group of boys arrive & Beah & his comrades discover that they are boys who fought for the Rebel Army. A brawl ensues & several children are killed (some from each side, but with Beahâs group getting the better of the rebel boys) & Beah himself becomes wounded. I would think that an organisation as worldly as UNICEF would not be stupid enough to think it a good idea to take boys straight from the front, from opposite sides of the war & place them in the same rehabilitation camp? I can understand that they might well do that, but surely not straight from the beginning of the rehab process? Surely they were clever enough to see that this kind of violence was not only a possibility it was practically a given!

There are other things that didnât quite sit right with me, like how does Beah remember everything when he openly admits that he was drugged up beyond all belief during the duration of his time in the war? How did Beah end up in the US? He talks about the busses, the money spent bribing officials to get as far as Conakry in Guinea, but by the time he arrived there he had little to know money & was sleeping on the ground in the Sierra Leonean Embassy there, after having entered Guinea illegallyâââBeah even alludes to the fact that he knows that there will be trouble to pay for having entered illegally, but all of that is left out as the book ends on the night of his arrival in Conakry.

Overall, this is a book that I would still recommend people reading, as perhaps it can serve as an eye-opener to the atrocities which adults perpetrate against children in the name of war. I would however recommend that they not take the book as gospel.

Now, purely because of my doubts related to the book, I am giving it a 3 out of 5.