A Long Way Gone - the book

I first heard about 'A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier' by Ishmael Beah on either Jon Stewart or the Colbert Report. The story sounded fascinating. I had heard about child soldiers and was interested to learn more about them.

I had heard about the controversy surrounding the book (you can read one article about it on Slate.com). The basic allegations were that his recounted things in great detail, considering the events happened years ago, under difficult conditions, when he was in his teens, and that some of the verifiable details were incorrect.

The story covers a couple year period during Sierra Leone's civil war. As the rebels go through the country taking over villages, Ishmael and some of his friends travel between villages, foraging for food and shelter in an effort to avoid being caught and either killed or forced into the rebel troops. Ishmael is then recruited into the army where he becomes a child soldier. He is then handed over to UNICEF where he is rehabilitated and eventually returned to civilian life, and finally, moves to NYC.

The writing style was a bit difficult to follow at times. The book was mostly in chronological order, but there were times where he'd recount dreams or memories and then segue back into the present without much delineation.

As with many other readers, I question his ability to recall events from a difficult time of his life in such detail. I don't doubt the thrust of the story is true, and that events like that "could have happened" or "did happen" to someone, I just wonder whether all of those things happened to him exactly as written. Had the book been 'fiction based on fact', I would have found this a lot less distracting. I especially started to feel this way after he said that his grandmother had given him a certain herb when he was young that was meant to give him a photographic memory. Some people do have very good memories - maybe his is very good, even photographic. But between the killings, the hunger, the drugs, and the fear, I doubt he was at his full mental capacity for that period of his life.

My final complaint would be that the book focuses heavily on the time leading up to his becoming a child soldier. Perhaps that is to afford the reader a better understanding of how and why he agreed. The child soldier period of his life was not long in the book - that was fine with me, it seemed a repetitive lifestyle and I quickly got the gist. But what I found most interesting was his rehabilitation. I feel as though the book hardly went into it. One day he's bucking against the indignity of being under the guidance of 'civilians' (the doctors and rehab workers by UNICEF), the next he's starting to talk with a nurse/liaison, the next he's being sent to New York City to speak at a conference on child soldiers in Africa. How do you pull someone back from that mindset? How do you deal with the physical issues, the drug addiction, and the emotional / mental at the same time? How do you ensure the home situation aids in their recovery? What is the success rate? I guess I should look for a book written about child soldiers by a UNICEF worker :)