A Long Way Gone - Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

This book is a memoir written by a young man not much older than myself who was a child soldier in Sierra Leone.

I actually don't know what to say about it. It took me about three months to get through it fully, because I kept having to put it down. That isn't really a criticism... at no point did I want to stop reading the book altogether or anything of that nature. Rather instead, the book is just so intensely sad and filled with such horrifying stories that it's just hard to read continuously. Beah exacts an emotional toll that is designed to obliterate everything before it.

This book might be too much for most people to read, but those that can withstand the intense and soul shattering grief that is presented will probably find the thing to be somehow rewarding. It's not a political book at all and at no time does it attempt to pass judgment on the political conflict. The story is rather told from the perspective of a boy who saw his family die in front of him before being given a gun, drugged up with cocaine mixed with gunpowder and sent to kill. The author tries to write as he feels and is extremely good at doing that.

It's not an easy story to read. But if you can get through that sort of thing, this is worth picking up. Just be prepared.

Few comments:

1) This is a memoir, so one is presumes that Mr. Beah's experiences are true here and I don't doubt them. A cursory glance at his wiki page reveals a discussion of some 'investigation' of a journalist from Sierra Leone that nitpicks details and tries to make the government look a bit better ('we didn't CONSCRIPT child soldiers, they were volunteers!'), but I'm willing to dismiss all of that as politically motivated hogwash.

That said, I did sense a certain amount of drama that felt a bit artificial. At one point, he's told that his parents and siblings are waiting for him in the next village and arrives in the village to find it burned to the ground just hours before. I would never have the guts to go up to this author and say 'Did it really happen like that?' but it still didn't quite ring true.

But quite frankly, I think it's his right to take some dramatic license with his story if he so chooses. It's his story to tell, after all, and I give him the benefit of the doubt.

2) The most powerful bit of the story for me was when he was standing in prayer in a village when the rebels attacked, scattering the prayer save for the Imam who stood before his Lord reciting a long sura until they came to butcher him. Beah isn't explicitly religious, but that image has power. That is the spirit that one hopes to hold onto as a believer, I do feel.

3) I don't cry for things that often and this is no exception. That isn't an assertion of some kind of machismo or anything, but rather it's just not what I do. Rather instead, when something makes me sad it gets me in my dreams. This book has haunted over me for the last little while and I think it will for a some time to come.

I should read something more cheerful next.