Mister Pip - Lloyd Jones

A deceptively slim book about a young girl attending a strange makeshift school on a tropical island cut off by civil war. Matilda is torn between her mother's faith and the story of Pip as told by the only white person there, in much the same way as the village is (tragically) caught between the increasingly vicious conflict of the 'redskins' and the 'rambos'. As she learns to use her imagination to escape to another world and to invent a new reality for herself, she is also - brutally - forced to realise that, as her mother and Mr. Watts ultimately agree, "We know the devil because we know ourselves. And how do we know God? We know God because we know ourselves."