A long way gone

memoirs of a boy soldier

by Ishmael Beah

229 pages

English language

Published Dec. 6, 2007 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

ISBN:: 978-0-374-10523-5
OCLC Number:: 69423270

(13 reviews)

This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived. Ishmael Beah, now 25 years old, tells how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts.--From publisher description.

15 editions

altlovesbooks reviewed A long way gone by Ishmael Beah

Review of 'A long way gone' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This is a 5-star story in a 3-star wrapping. I've averaged the two to 4 stars, reluctantly, because I hate doing so.

Beah was a child in Sierra Leone in a time of violence. Not satisfied with visiting his village alone, violence chases Beah as he flees further and further from his home, trying to find safety and to reunite with a family he isn't sure he'll see again. Along the way, he's picked up by the Sierra Leone government, turned into a child soldier, given a gun, training, drugs, and conditioning, and set loose against rebels fighting for their country. Fortunately for Beah and the other child soldiers with him, the UN steps in, separates the children from their group, and rehabilitates them.

The last half of the book was easily the best. I had no idea snorting gunpowder and cocaine was a thing (called brown-brown if you're curious; Wikipedia has an article about it), and the things these children normalize while under the rule of these soldiers are horrible. The subsequent rehabilitation and release of Beah back into society was also really interesting, as are the events that happen up until the end of the book.

Unfortunately the book just....ends. I think we're missing several story beats that would carry us, the reader, to the end of his refugee story. I also thought (and this feels gross of me to say, given the subject matter) that the first half of the book was longer than it needed to be. I didn't really feel connected with Beah or his friends until halfway through the book, because everything felt...distant and disconnected up until that point. I don't know if it was a product of the storytelling or maybe having disassociated memories from before the kidnapping, but I just didn't feel drawn in immediately.

Still, this is a violent, bloody, necessary story that I'm glad to have read.

markm reviewed A long way gone by Ishmael Beah

Review of 'A long way gone' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

From Carolyn. Lets you be in this terrible tragedy.

AliCorbin reviewed A long way gone by Ishmael Beah

Review of 'A long way gone' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Most of the readers 'enjoyed' the book, meaning that they were glad that they read it, rather then that they took pleasure in reading it. Bruce bucked the trend by hating it, as far as I can tell, simply because it's been presented as something new, and the latest fad, when civil wars and atrocities have been going on in Africa for close to half a century. (That he remembers. He is a bit older than me.) Carolyn mused about what the point of reading the book might be - that is, what could we possibly do about atrocities in another country.

This sparked a lively discussion between the idealistic, naive college students and the worldly, cynical old farts. Mostly, it was about root causes of conflict, human nature, 'knowledge is power', and other social issues, rather than talking about the book itself.

A largish crowd, of nearly all new people (including Courtney and Jeanne, from PDOT) who had come out for the 'Everybody Reads' discussion. It was a difficult book to read for pretty much everyone. It was a memoir, rather than a history, told by a child. The middle part, when he was a soldier, was disjoint and sometimes incoherent. It's possible that he spared us the worst of the descriptions of the violence. Or maybe, between the drugs the the killing, he just couldn't remember the most of it.