BuzzFlash Reviews

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

From Publishers Weekly:

Starred Review. This absorbing account by a young man who, as a boy of 12, gets swept up in Sierra Leone's civil war goes beyond even the best journalistic efforts in revealing the life and mind of a child abducted into the horrors of warfare. Beah's harrowing journey transforms him overnight from a child enthralled by American hip-hop music and dance to an internal refugee bereft of family, wandering from village to village in a country grown deeply divided by the indiscriminate atrocities of unruly, sociopathic rebel and army forces. Beah then finds himself in the army—in a drug-filled life of casual mass slaughter that lasts until he is 15, when he's brought to a rehabilitation center sponsored by UNICEF and partnering NGOs.

The process marks out Beah as a gifted spokesman for the center's work after his "repatriation" to civilian life in the capital, where he lives with his family and a distant uncle. When the war finally engulfs the capital, it sends 17-year-old Beah fleeing again, this time to the U.S., where he now lives. (Beah graduated from Oberlin College in 2004.) Told in clear, accessible language by a young writer with a gifted literary voice, this memoir seems destined to become a classic firsthand account of war and the ongoing plight of child soldiers in conflicts worldwide.

An Online Reviewer:

"So how should we think of this book?

Ishmael Beah displays great range of emotion: from his description of shocking atrocities (many carried out by the author himself and graphically described) to the tender feelings between him and his nurse, Esther, in the rehabilitation camp, and his relationship with his uncle and the family members he's united with in Freetown.

Think of this book as a great and important story. Beah shows how we strive mightily to hold on to our humanity--even in the midst of terrifying conditions. And we can recover. How regrettable that we live in a world where so many blood curdling stories are taken for granted. This isn't a movie.

In Ishmael's first speech about the horrors he experienced as a child soldier he reminds his audience that children have the resilience to outlive their sufferings. Ishmael's tale is a story of great hope--something very necessary given the present state of the world. How eloquent he is, and how beautiful his story is!

I was pleased to hear Ishmael Beah read from this book in person recently in Washington, D.C. It was a great literary experience."

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS