Customer Reviews: Read 384 more reviews...
 A must read for every teenager and parent August 13, 2008
This book should be read by every teenager in the United States and there parents. Our children of today think life is so hard on them. If they read this book as written by someone who had life turned upside down on them and came out with a purpose they would know that they have a pretty good life in the USA. He will never be able to get his childhood back but can now recover from the things no child should have to see or go through.
I really enjoyed this book he made you think that he was a "storyteller of his village". I do wish that he had added a couple of chapters at the end on how he is doing today and what he is going to do next.
 A long way Gone August 12, 2008
I really liked the book. Its a story that needs to be told and Mr Beah does a great job of relating his experiences as a solider in Sierra Leone. Enlightening and heartbreaking. Highly recommended
A disturbing, but fascinating, look into Africa July 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A Long Way Gone chronicles the life of a young teen in Sierra Leone who is fleeing the Rebels who are wreaking havoc in villages throughout the region. He falls in with a group of boys trying to survive, but since everyone is suspicious of groups of boys, they live a hard life. Eventually they, between the ages of 14 and 17, are conscripted into the Army to fight the Rebels.
The book is very well written. It is intense, gripping and honest. You will be amazed what was transpiring in Sierra Leone less than a decade ago. This, like so many tragedies in Africa, didn't get a lot of press until after the fact.
If you ever think you have a lot of problems or find yourself complaining a lot, you will gain a lot of perspective from this book. It is a short book (about 250 pages) and so engrossing that you will probably finish in just a few sittings. I haven't read a book this good in quite a while. Highly recommended.
Caveat: this book is not for the faint of heart. If books got ratings like movies, this would easily get an "R" rating - the war it describes is not pretty. However, I felt the book was well done and does not unnecessarily dwell on anything unpleasant.
A Long Way Gone July 13, 2008
Surprisingly well written for someone with a background of being a civil
war soldier at such a young age. His intelligence shines through. What this boy has lived through, and the ways he tries to overcome adversity, should be an inspiring story to anyone. Once I started this book I never put it down.
 Fact Vs. Fiction - Say "NO" to "poetic license" July 5, 2008
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
FACT OR FICTION
Do a background check on the author and you'll see articles in SLATE, the NY TIMES and others in which the author's veracity is, tragically, in question.
Please don't shoot the messenger when you find some disturbing questions, and just as importantly, don't shoot the _message_.
After all, these events did take place, and it's important that we recognize and absorb them, so we can act quickly to help when they happen. (Think the Rwandan genocide, when the international community sat on the sidelines as 1,000,000 people were killed over 100 days.)
IF, however you are interested in the controversy surrounding this particular book and my take on it, read on:
CONTROVERSY
This is an important, gripping work that brings attention to some of what's happening in other parts of the world.
However ....
... if you read-up on this author, you'll find out about the ongoing controversy over the accuracy of events that occur in the book. (Look for articles in Slate, the New York times, among others.)
As a result, several salient points emerge:
1) Some of the work appears to have been written originally as _fiction_ with the aid of his Oberlin University Creative Writing teacher Dan Chaon, which was then changed to non-fiction.
2) Having said that, the author probably *did* experience some of what was written about in Memoirs, although to a different degree than described. How much, unfortunately we'll never know.
This means that:
3) The book contains BOTH FICTIVE AND NON-FICTIVE ELEMENTS, the fictive elements (in the Creative Writing teacher's own words, captured on tape by an Australian journalist) added as "poetic license."
And here is where I take umbrage.
FACT VS. FICTION: WHY IT'S IMPORTANT
With the relatively-recent publication and retraction of fake biographies (such as "Love and Consequences," a fake memoir of growing up in an L.A. gang, since discredited and pulled by the publisher), I think the blowback against this book is reasonable.
There's a REASON we have categories such as "fiction" and "non-fiction," and why we keep them separate.
Fact is the opportunity to examine the nuances of history and its consequences, and learn something from the net result. Fiction is highly subjective, one person (or group's) untested ideas of what might be (even if the fictive work is set in the past). To blur the line is to cheapen the lessons of history.
SAY NO TO FACT-ION
Faction has become a bit too rampant nowadays, from "historical movies" that invent unsubstantiated love affairs (think Truman Capote kissing Perry Smith in "Infamous," or Queen Elizabeth having an historically unsubstantiated affair with Sir Walter Raleigh in "Elizabeth: The Golden Years,") to books like "Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan," which blessedly received the ridicule it deserved.
And perhaps it's true that it's the publishing houses -- or even the public's taste for only the most sensationalistic -- that are to blame, putting pressure on well-intentioned authors such as Ishmael Beah to color stories that are already horrific enough, for the sake of maximum marketability.
By all means, read and absorb Ishmael Beah's tragic story.
You can be sure some of these things happened to him, and certainly to others.
COMMERCE ABOVE ALL?
But let's start thinking about saying "no" to another machine, although one less horrific than the one Beah had to endure: the machine of sensationalism-over-truth, which encourages writers and publishers to color facts to maximize sales, thus potentially discrediting what is an important core message.
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