Title: A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Author: Ishmael Beah

Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books 2007

Genre: Memoir

Pages: 232

Rating:  3 / 5 stars

Reading Challenges: T4MC -- Bio, Memoir; Nerdy Nonfiction -- Memoir; New Author; Library Loan; 52 Books in 52 Weeks -- Week 4

How I Got It: Library Loan (Book Club Selection)

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. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.

What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? 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.

In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: 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.

This was January's book club selection.  And I have to say that I did not enjoy it.  The story of child soldiers is powerful, an evil we must combat.  But I just didn't connect at all to the Beah or any of the other people in the memoir.  I just didn't get emotionally wrapped into the story.  I stood on the outskirts seeing the story unfold, but not needing to see more.  I compare reading this story to reading We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families by Philip Gourevitch about the Rwandan genocide.  The way Gourevitch's book was constructed drew me into the story and the people's lives.  I felt connected to them.  I felt their fear and joy throughout.  This just didn't hit me the same way.