I started this book many months ago and returned it to the library unfinished. I picked it up when it came back yesterday and finished it last night. The story is of a boy's struggle to escape and then survive the warfare in Sierra Leone. I feel voyeuristic reading this but I suppose it is important to see what happens in this world. 
 There are two things that surprise me in the telling. I wonder how much is storytelling and how much Ishmael's actual then and there responses. Also, a cultural thing, how much touching these people do amongst their families and friends. What fifteen year old boy from the States would hold his uncle's hand? 
 The horror of what he goes through is muted. We see too much sometimes, I think, to take reality seriously.