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A review by matthewgrant
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah
3.0
This one has been sitting on my shelf forever, since Beah came to my university and spoke back when I was college. I finally got around to reading it, although I wish I had done so much closer to when I saw him in person.
This is pretty much exactly what you'd expect - a straightforward narrative of Beah's experience first running from, and then fighting in, a war in his home country of Sierra Leone. The experiences are horrifying, especially seeing that Beah was 13-15 years old when this was all taking place.
Some of the narrative lacks a seasoned writer's flourish, and can be a little staid at times. But I was actually quite surprised with how vivid some of the recollections were, given that they happened so long ago (of course, how can you forget things like this?) and that Beah is not, first and foremost, a writer. Unfortunately the ending was really abrupt, which was too bad because I wanted to know more about what happened to him after.
This is pretty much exactly what you'd expect - a straightforward narrative of Beah's experience first running from, and then fighting in, a war in his home country of Sierra Leone. The experiences are horrifying, especially seeing that Beah was 13-15 years old when this was all taking place.
Some of the narrative lacks a seasoned writer's flourish, and can be a little staid at times. But I was actually quite surprised with how vivid some of the recollections were, given that they happened so long ago (of course, how can you forget things like this?) and that Beah is not, first and foremost, a writer. Unfortunately the ending was really abrupt, which was too bad because I wanted to know more about what happened to him after.