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Boy, Interrupted
What happens when a young boy's life is interrupted by war? Two young classmates, Tarnue, a boy from 'Monrovia-poor', and Kou, the cherished daughter of a big man in government, strike up an unlikely, yet instinctual friendship. It is 1989 in Liberia and when civil war comes, day-to-day concerns of school, parental pressure and the luxurious rewards of ice cream and new sneakers irrevocably disappear. Liberian Saah Millimono's debut is a moving account of a boy's life in a time of crisis. Tarnue is at times clear-eyed and wise beyond his years, at others bewildered by the impact of national upheaval on his already challenging existence as Charles Taylor's forces enter Liberia. Millimono's is a brave, honest voice. With prose that is authentic and spare, this story of one boy caught up in cataclysmic events is a powerful indictment of the trauma, and the pity, of war.
- GenresLiberia
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 15, 2018
In a nutshell, this book was a long 150- paged primary school composition written by a 10 year old.
The book does actually tell the story of Tarnue, a 10 year old Liberian boy who is sent off by his parents to live with his uncle for reasons, I, the reader is unable to understand. He has a difficult time adjusting at his uncle’s home as he is forced to work, selling bread every day after school and barely has time to read. Kou, a girl of about 12 years from his school befriends him and they form a close friendship and begin helping each other with school work.
Just when Tarnue thought his fortunes were turning around, civil war breaks out in Liberia and everything goes to hell. Kou’s parents are killed. As Tarnue and his uncle’s family try make their escape, they are captured by rebels and Tarnue is conscripted as a child soldier. Enough already with the story! Here is what is wrong with it…
The writer attempts to introduce a love story between Tarnue and Kou which is not properly thought out and ends up being a miss. A horrible, poorly executed miss.
The constant use of the phrase “No sooner….than….” throughout the book made me unable to take it seriously. It sounded like a children’s book.
The ending was also rushed and everything was cramped up in the last 3 paragraphs which left me with a lot of unanswered questions. Like, what happened to Tarnue’s parents? What kind of training did Tarnue get to turn him, a child of 10, into a cold blooded killer? What was his thought process?
The only good thing about this book was that it prompted me to read on the Liberian Civil War which I must say unfolded exactly as described in the book. I also loved the title, ‘Boy, Interrupted’, such a befitting title for the book had it been properly executed.
This book was pitted against the likes of Stay with Me for the Kwani? Manuscript Project 2013 and was picked as 1st Runner’s up, coming second to ‘Kintu” by Nancy Nansubuga. I am still trying to process the how? My guess is that the Kwani? Manuscript Project judges wanted to be as country diverse as possible and thus awarded this book from Liberia 1st runner up position.
When I finished it, in about 3 hours, I had no option than to fling it across the room in angst.
The book does actually tell the story of Tarnue, a 10 year old Liberian boy who is sent off by his parents to live with his uncle for reasons, I, the reader is unable to understand. He has a difficult time adjusting at his uncle’s home as he is forced to work, selling bread every day after school and barely has time to read. Kou, a girl of about 12 years from his school befriends him and they form a close friendship and begin helping each other with school work.
Just when Tarnue thought his fortunes were turning around, civil war breaks out in Liberia and everything goes to hell. Kou’s parents are killed. As Tarnue and his uncle’s family try make their escape, they are captured by rebels and Tarnue is conscripted as a child soldier. Enough already with the story! Here is what is wrong with it…
The writer attempts to introduce a love story between Tarnue and Kou which is not properly thought out and ends up being a miss. A horrible, poorly executed miss.
The constant use of the phrase “No sooner….than….” throughout the book made me unable to take it seriously. It sounded like a children’s book.
The ending was also rushed and everything was cramped up in the last 3 paragraphs which left me with a lot of unanswered questions. Like, what happened to Tarnue’s parents? What kind of training did Tarnue get to turn him, a child of 10, into a cold blooded killer? What was his thought process?
The only good thing about this book was that it prompted me to read on the Liberian Civil War which I must say unfolded exactly as described in the book. I also loved the title, ‘Boy, Interrupted’, such a befitting title for the book had it been properly executed.
This book was pitted against the likes of Stay with Me for the Kwani? Manuscript Project 2013 and was picked as 1st Runner’s up, coming second to ‘Kintu” by Nancy Nansubuga. I am still trying to process the how? My guess is that the Kwani? Manuscript Project judges wanted to be as country diverse as possible and thus awarded this book from Liberia 1st runner up position.
When I finished it, in about 3 hours, I had no option than to fling it across the room in angst.
February 24, 2018
The tragedy that is the making of child soldiers torments endlessly. Pulls at heartstrings and tear ducts and invokes desolation. Boy Interrupted reads very much like the true story of Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone. Same script, different cast; same tragic story of children thrust into a world of warring horror.
Boy Interrupted quite aptly describes the entire interruption that is Tarnue's life. Interruption is quite mild a word actually. More like upheaval or total disruption. To read his account as fiction when in actual fact it rings as near truth has elicited mixed feelings of relief that this is not a true story but sheer dispiritedness that his account could very well be the true account of others.
Interesting to note that the civil was is so recent ( late eighties and in the nineties) where other countries in Africa have been putting in development initiatives, and that the efforts to rebuild Liberia are still ongoing to date to try and recover from this pointless conflict.
The story constructs characters so vividly and evokes emotions of love, hate, fear, anger, disgust and so on, to the extent that the book is unputdownable. I am very curious though about what became of the rest of Tarnue's family? His Uncle, Aunt, His Parents, Patience, Garmai? The book leaves us hanging wondering what their fate was after the intervention of ECOMOG.
A well written piece that has one inspired to be thankful for peace and remember it is not always guaranteed, as well as to try and figure out what role in both individual and joint capacity one can play to contribute to world peace.
I enjoyed this book.
Boy Interrupted quite aptly describes the entire interruption that is Tarnue's life. Interruption is quite mild a word actually. More like upheaval or total disruption. To read his account as fiction when in actual fact it rings as near truth has elicited mixed feelings of relief that this is not a true story but sheer dispiritedness that his account could very well be the true account of others.
Interesting to note that the civil was is so recent ( late eighties and in the nineties) where other countries in Africa have been putting in development initiatives, and that the efforts to rebuild Liberia are still ongoing to date to try and recover from this pointless conflict.
The story constructs characters so vividly and evokes emotions of love, hate, fear, anger, disgust and so on, to the extent that the book is unputdownable. I am very curious though about what became of the rest of Tarnue's family? His Uncle, Aunt, His Parents, Patience, Garmai? The book leaves us hanging wondering what their fate was after the intervention of ECOMOG.
A well written piece that has one inspired to be thankful for peace and remember it is not always guaranteed, as well as to try and figure out what role in both individual and joint capacity one can play to contribute to world peace.
I enjoyed this book.
August 7, 2020
there is a class that controls a country that is stupid, and will never realize anything and never can. that is why we have this war.
Earnest Hemingway, A farewell to arms.
***the soldiers would have killed everybody but god was with us***he is our refuge in our of darkness,and is full of mercy and kindness.i believe with prayer he will help us all. but if anyone of you wishes to leave you can leave at once. the days are evil and it is never wrong to be cautious.:pastor.***
i was not afraid, standing there among all the others. i had ceased to be afraid. death to me was something that you could do nothing about, especially if you killed other people so easily and so often that life had ceased to have any meaning. pumped full of marijuana, drunk human blood and eaten human heart you are truly no longer afraid. you begin to look at fellow human beings with eyes of the hyena. or even when they are alive you were already hovering over them like a vulture.
stingy man dies careless way.
Earnest Hemingway, A farewell to arms.
***the soldiers would have killed everybody but god was with us***he is our refuge in our of darkness,and is full of mercy and kindness.i believe with prayer he will help us all. but if anyone of you wishes to leave you can leave at once. the days are evil and it is never wrong to be cautious.:pastor.***
i was not afraid, standing there among all the others. i had ceased to be afraid. death to me was something that you could do nothing about, especially if you killed other people so easily and so often that life had ceased to have any meaning. pumped full of marijuana, drunk human blood and eaten human heart you are truly no longer afraid. you begin to look at fellow human beings with eyes of the hyena. or even when they are alive you were already hovering over them like a vulture.
stingy man dies careless way.
July 1, 2018
Heart breaking account of lives thrown asunder by a senseless war, shows the sie of how children are (mis)used in these wars. Truly heartbreaking.
April 1, 2016
This is a delicate story about child soldiers in war torn Liberia. Now I’ll be honest and say that my knowledge of child soldiers is limited to Di Caprio’s movie “Blood Diamond”. I mean, I knew children were forced to take up arms and all during wars, but to vividly read about it in this book gave me the chills. Serious chills.
The protagonist, Tarnue, is a young boy of 10 doted by his parents. They decide to apprentice him to his uncle to better his opportunities in education. The separation from his family and familiar surroundings was understandably difficult for the young boy, and was not made any easier by his uncle’s wife who makes him wake up at odd hours in the morning to bake bread and sell it in the evenings. He had no time to study his lessons and most of the day he goes to bed on an empty stomach.
He is given respite from that life when he befriends and later falls in love with Kou, a young girl from a wealthy side of the street. Kou’s parents buy all the bread that he’s meant to sell daily, giving him time to concentrate on his studies and well, be a child again. His grades improve, he gets closer to Kou, and they’re even making plans to study abroad with the civil war broke out.
Kou’s parents are killed, he and Kou get separated due to all the confusion. Tarnue is captured by the rebel faction and forced to take up arms. Kou on the other hand is forced to marry a warlord and gets pregnant. Tarnue is rescued by ECOMOG (economic community of west African states monitoring group) forces and is reunited with Kou. Do they live happily after? We don’t know. The book clatters to a flustered end right there.
This book tackles a lot of social issues. Education, child labor, child soldiers, child marriages, rape, power greedy politicians.. The author tried to fit all that in a short book which sort of gives you the feeling that he fleetingly touches on each topic without properly expounding on them.
The book is short at 150 pages, but Tarnue’s experiences as a child soldier covered about 20 pages only. I would have preferred more depth in that part of the story. Millimono failed to show the transition from an innocent boy to a killing machine – what were his thoughts, how did he feel, was he haunted by all that he was forced to do? At one point he writes.. “You know I never used to be like this before. It’s the war. The rebels came here and took me to that training camp and made me so bad things. I’m just like one of them now. But what can I do?”The thought process seems quite matter of fact for a bot of just 12 who was forced to do horrendous things. Milimono writes that the protagonist was haunted but reading it, I didn’t quite feel any emotion from him. I hate drawing comparisons here but do you all remember the Ugwu character in Adichie’s “Half of a yellow sun”? When he was forced to take up arms you could feel his resistance and the horrors that he went through were transported to the reader. I didn’t quite feel it here, hence 3 star for an otherwise brilliantly written debut novel.
The protagonist, Tarnue, is a young boy of 10 doted by his parents. They decide to apprentice him to his uncle to better his opportunities in education. The separation from his family and familiar surroundings was understandably difficult for the young boy, and was not made any easier by his uncle’s wife who makes him wake up at odd hours in the morning to bake bread and sell it in the evenings. He had no time to study his lessons and most of the day he goes to bed on an empty stomach.
He is given respite from that life when he befriends and later falls in love with Kou, a young girl from a wealthy side of the street. Kou’s parents buy all the bread that he’s meant to sell daily, giving him time to concentrate on his studies and well, be a child again. His grades improve, he gets closer to Kou, and they’re even making plans to study abroad with the civil war broke out.
Kou’s parents are killed, he and Kou get separated due to all the confusion. Tarnue is captured by the rebel faction and forced to take up arms. Kou on the other hand is forced to marry a warlord and gets pregnant. Tarnue is rescued by ECOMOG (economic community of west African states monitoring group) forces and is reunited with Kou. Do they live happily after? We don’t know. The book clatters to a flustered end right there.
This book tackles a lot of social issues. Education, child labor, child soldiers, child marriages, rape, power greedy politicians.. The author tried to fit all that in a short book which sort of gives you the feeling that he fleetingly touches on each topic without properly expounding on them.
The book is short at 150 pages, but Tarnue’s experiences as a child soldier covered about 20 pages only. I would have preferred more depth in that part of the story. Millimono failed to show the transition from an innocent boy to a killing machine – what were his thoughts, how did he feel, was he haunted by all that he was forced to do? At one point he writes.. “You know I never used to be like this before. It’s the war. The rebels came here and took me to that training camp and made me so bad things. I’m just like one of them now. But what can I do?”The thought process seems quite matter of fact for a bot of just 12 who was forced to do horrendous things. Milimono writes that the protagonist was haunted but reading it, I didn’t quite feel any emotion from him. I hate drawing comparisons here but do you all remember the Ugwu character in Adichie’s “Half of a yellow sun”? When he was forced to take up arms you could feel his resistance and the horrors that he went through were transported to the reader. I didn’t quite feel it here, hence 3 star for an otherwise brilliantly written debut novel.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 13, 2016
Today, I want to tell you a story. It is not my story. It is Saah Millimono’s story. Maybe it is actually not his story, it is the novel’s protagonist Tarnue’s story. And not just Tarnue’s, it is also Kou’s story. I know that if I go on, and on, this will end up as a story of Tarnue’s family, Kou’s family and by the time we are done, it will be the story of lives in Monrovia, Liberia and beyond to other countries that have been through civil war. As some commentators would want us to believe, this means not just neighbouring Sierra Leone, but much of Africa. Is this a book about Africa? What never seems to be mentioned is that this has happened, civil war happens and will happen anywhere in the world. That war is human. And love is human too.
Let the back cover copy of Saah Millimono’s Kwani Manuscript Project second place winner, Boy, Interrupted not deceive you, when it talks about the trauma and pity of war. In fact, I advise you to ignore Olufemi Terry’s focus on violence, exploitation and displacement in his blurb for the novel. How could Terry not see the love? This is really a love story (read in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s tone). I want to mistrust Hawa Jande Golakai when she says that Millimono captures Liberia’s people, politics and cityscape during its civil war, even though I am not Liberian, and she is. This is a bigger story about love and its triumph. For me, it is a story about one boy, one girl who trust love enough, and despite the interruption of their lives by war are determined to keep trusting love. Maybe all the Liberian people are romantics like Tarnue and Kou? I don’t know. I only know these two lovebirds from Millimono’s novel. Helon Habila is the only one of the three writers whose endorsements appear on the back cover of the Kenya-based Kwani Trust published book that comes close to seeing what I see. He describes the book as “a searing, heartbreaking love story set in the civil war years in Liberia.”
While both love and war stand out in this 150-page novel, only love is a result of deliberate actions and a show of passion by the two main characters, Tarnue and Kou. War is an interruption. Out of their control. This book screams one thing: that love can triumph against all odds. That war can indeed interrupt love, but love can triumph. War is a loser. Can someone say, Amen? It therefore beats my understanding why the focus by the blurb-writers is on the war, on violence, on exploitation, displacement, everything else but the love. When Ben Okri talks about the tyranny of dark subjects, I think he is unknowingly pointing the fingers at the readers (including himself), even if he directs the missiles at the writers.
Read more at https://africainwords.com/2015/05/27/...
Let the back cover copy of Saah Millimono’s Kwani Manuscript Project second place winner, Boy, Interrupted not deceive you, when it talks about the trauma and pity of war. In fact, I advise you to ignore Olufemi Terry’s focus on violence, exploitation and displacement in his blurb for the novel. How could Terry not see the love? This is really a love story (read in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s tone). I want to mistrust Hawa Jande Golakai when she says that Millimono captures Liberia’s people, politics and cityscape during its civil war, even though I am not Liberian, and she is. This is a bigger story about love and its triumph. For me, it is a story about one boy, one girl who trust love enough, and despite the interruption of their lives by war are determined to keep trusting love. Maybe all the Liberian people are romantics like Tarnue and Kou? I don’t know. I only know these two lovebirds from Millimono’s novel. Helon Habila is the only one of the three writers whose endorsements appear on the back cover of the Kenya-based Kwani Trust published book that comes close to seeing what I see. He describes the book as “a searing, heartbreaking love story set in the civil war years in Liberia.”
While both love and war stand out in this 150-page novel, only love is a result of deliberate actions and a show of passion by the two main characters, Tarnue and Kou. War is an interruption. Out of their control. This book screams one thing: that love can triumph against all odds. That war can indeed interrupt love, but love can triumph. War is a loser. Can someone say, Amen? It therefore beats my understanding why the focus by the blurb-writers is on the war, on violence, on exploitation, displacement, everything else but the love. When Ben Okri talks about the tyranny of dark subjects, I think he is unknowingly pointing the fingers at the readers (including himself), even if he directs the missiles at the writers.
Read more at https://africainwords.com/2015/05/27/...
August 5, 2015
I have read about boy soldiers but hearing the voice of a boy soldier new, heartbreaking and terrifying. Boy, Interrupted begins with a familiar African story line; a young underprivileged boy finds a benefactor and then gets an education and goes on to do well and make his family proud. That's how this book starts and then you see the war, slow and sinister creeping into his life. The title is perfect. I became attached to the main character and the people around him - the kind school girl, the cruel aunt and the next door neighbors so watching normal daily life change for them over the chapters to become daily uncertainty, cruelty and violence was unsettling to say the least. I love books that have me googling information and learning for weeks after I have finished them.
January 5, 2017
I love that is is a story that is easy to read yet it has great depth!
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