Dryden MS / HS Book Blog

Title:  A Long Way Gone

Author:  Ishmael Beah

Genre:  Non-fiction (Memoir)

Paperback edition with 218 pages.

Published:  2007

Narrator:  First Person

Brief Overview: A Long Way Gone is a memoir written by Ishmael Beah, who describes his life as a child soldier in Africa during the 1980′s and 1990′s.  Beah was born in Sierra Leone, Africa in 1980.  His parents were separated when he was very young.  Beah had two brothers, Junior, who was a year older, and Ibrahim, who was four years younger than Beah.  Beah, Junior, and their friends were very close to each other, and liked to sing rap music.  They first experienced the civil war in Africa when Beah was twelve.  There were constant rumors going around about the rebels coming closer to the town they were in.  People started passing through who were injured by the rebels.  Eventually, the rebels did come, causing everyone to flee.  The boys came close to being captured by the rebels, but escaped during a standoff between the rebels and the government troops.  Later on, the boys were separated, and go their own ways.  Ishmael was picked up by the government and met some friends who were found too.  They became soldiers, and helped to try and stop the rebels.

I really liked A Long Way Gone, because it is very interesting how children as young as seven years old were trained as soldiers in Africa, not too long ago.  Before reading this book, I had not heard much about the war in Africa during the 1980′s and 1990′s.  I did not know that children were used as soldiers, children who were too young to understand why they were fighting.  The book is very informative, and describes disturbing events, how the rebels killed babies, were extremely cruel to women, and killed for the fun of killing.  It was also disturbing to see how the children became hardened by the war, and didn’t think twice about things that would make us become sick to our stomachs.

This quote from the book shows how Ishmael was affected by the war: ”The breeze brings faint cries of  those whose last breaths are leaving their mangled bodies.  I walk past them.  Their arms and legs are missing; their intestines spill out through the bullet holes in their stomachs; brain matter comes out of their noses and ears.  The flies are so excited and intoxicated that they fall on the pools of blood and die.  The eyes of the nearly dead are redder than the blood that comes out of them, and it seems that their bones will tear through the skin of their taut faces any minute” (18). This is a dream that Ishmael had, but it combines the memories of the experiences of war.  These experiences will stay with Ishmael forever, but he has learned how to cope with them.

I like the way the author tells the reader about his life.  The reader can tell that the war was very disturbing for Ishmael, and that he didn’t think it possible to be able to live a normal life after the war.  The memoir is narrated as if the events took place recently.  The book has many details that are both interesting and disturbing at the same time.  There are passages with action and violence and passages with Ishmael explaining events.

I give A Long Way Gone five out of five stars.  I enjoyed reading the book from start to finish, and I don’t have anything negative to say about this book.  I recommend anyone who is interested in life as a child soldier or the war in Africa during the 1980′s and 1990′s read A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah.  However, people who are sensitive to disturbing details should be forewarned, since the book contains graphic passages.