Little Bee: A Novel

Honestly I don't know what people are thinking when they market books anymore. The blurb on this book would have you believe that it's not only a laugh riot -- except for the beach scene which is "horrific" -- but that it's so remarkably written and in some way so easy to spoil that it all but swears the reader to a code of silence. And in fact, it's none of those things. All those marketing ploys actually do a disservice to an excellent book and if I were the author, I'd hate it that my work was being so misrepresented.

Briefly, "Little Bee" is about a young Nigerian refugee whose very existence changes the lives of a group of English citizens in dramatic ways. It's a good story and well-written but it would be silly of me to say that I don't want to tell you more because I don't want to spoil it for you. That would feel like me saying "I have NO idea what this is about."

It's about sadness. Really. It's not funny, except perhaps in small details where you might find yourself smiling ruefully. It's a sad book filled with sad and often thoughtless people. It's about how we cover our sadness with layers of so-called civilization, wrap our fears in popular culture, and never ever have the opportunity to face any of it and learn to rise above. Little Bee knows how to rise above. She's known how to do it her whole life because there's nowhere to hide in her country. Poverty, abuse and death are common where she is from, and if you don't want them to destroy you, they must be transcended.

I read the first two chapters just waiting for the comedy to begin. I waited for the beach scene with a measure of anxiety. I waited for some enormous surprise which I would long to tell others, but would keep to myself out of a sense of reader's decency. And each time, I found the truth to be something quite different. I'm actually happy about that because, for me at least, it means I was reading a book that might not be dismissed in a year or even a month as some pop cultural flash. It's a book which should make you think about the world and your place in it, and about what we owe to one another as human beings on this increasingly small, spinning globe.

I found it profoundly moving.

"Little Bee" is the second novel by Chris Cleave and I will be purchasing his first novel as soon as I finish this review. Little Bee is a 16-year old refugee from Nigeria who is always looking for a suicidal option for "when the men come". Her character provides a unique and captivating narrative; by page three I cared about her, by page nine I knew she had terrible story to tell me and I dreaded it.

Cleave's skillful pace brings us along in measured doses to the horrible thing that happened on a beach in Nigeria. What do a 4-year old boy who thinks he's Batman, his widowed, 9-fingered, mother Sarah, and his anguished father, have to do with Little Bee? Not only are we propelled to read what happened on that beach...we are compelled to know what will happen next.

Alternating voices of Little Bee and Sarah circle around the beach story. This is great storytelling; skillful foreshadowing, the careful scattering of clues, building suspense and dread.

Little Bee's plight overlays a rich and disturbing subtext of broader issues such as the unfathomable abyss between first and third world countries, the dark politics of oil, the labyrinthine plight of refugees and insight into UK detention centers.

Cleave has given us a beautifully written, witty, heartbreaking, evocative, suspenseful and horrific novel.

I picked up the book "The Other Hand" by Chris Cleave on a layover at Heathrow airport because I had finished my previous book. I was not familiar with the author and the admitedly somewhat gimmicky jacket summary intrigued me. I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into. It turns out that this book (titled "Little Bee" in the US after the name of the main character) is one of the most engaging books I've read in some time.

The story unfolds quietly giving you snapshots into the lives of the different characters but without letting you in on the full plot. Some characters you barely get to admire before you leave behind as Little Bee moves on, others develop as the story goes (Sarah, for instance).

I found both the premise and the characters to be engaging and am somewhat surprised by some negative reviews melting the story down to a UK/Nigeria Colonial War sort or moral. If that is all you take from this book then you have missed it, entirely. You've missed Sarah and her son, you've missed Yevette from Jamaica and the girl with no name... and you've certainly missed Little Bee.

Again, fantastic book that I recommend to anyone looking for well-crafted prose with a personality.

This beautiful, harrowing novel is told in two voices. One is that of Little Bee, the 16-year-old Nigerian girl trying to find a safe haven in the UK. The other is that of Sarah, an English woman who met Little Bee and her sister briefly, in a standoff with oil company mercenaries on a beach in Nigeria. Each voice is distinct, compelling, and convincingly female -- this last being a trick not all male writers can pull off. Little Bee's voice is quiet, smooth, given to poetic -- yet somehow childlike -- imagery. Sarah's voice is full of her neuroses and doubts. But in both voices there is strength also.

The plot and the various situations of the book are absolutely compelling. The beach scene is every bit as horrifying as the book-jacket copy hints that it will be. The work & marriage struggles that plague Sarah and her husband are mundane but not overplayed. I did find the character of Charlie/Batman to be a little bit gimmicky. It rang true enough, but his importance to the plot at the end of the book left me cold.

The end of the book is the reason why I'm not giving the book five stars. Charlie/Batman gets pulled out TWICE as the reason why Little Bee is willing to sacrifice herself. Once would have been fine; twice seems like the author couldn't come up with anything else. I also felt that too much stuff near the end seemed "Hollywood," such as what happens on Little Bee's plane ride. The rest of the book was so much better than formulaic devices such as giving everything up so a child can have a chance, and surprise appearances at the airport.

However, as disappointed as I was with the ending, the fact remains, LITTLE BEE is a beautifully written, heart-rending book. It will make you want to do something about the Little Bees of the world. It will open your eyes to joys that may be right in front of you, that you have forgotten to appreciate. It will make you realize how trapped and compromised so many of us are. But life is beautiful anyway. Life is worth it anyway. That is the message of LITTLE BEE.

This is one of those books that's likely to be deeply divisive -- either you're going to be swept up by and find it a gripping story of human connection, or you're going to find it to be a rather mawkish clunkily written expression of first-world angst. British journalist Cleave has written about how the book was inspired by several days he spent at an immigration detention center (which he terms a concentration camp), and the heartbreaking stories he heard there. He wanted to tell the story of an asylum seeker in a way that would resonate in a way a news story can't. And in that respect he's succeeded.

However, as a novel, the book just isn't that good. Broadly speaking, the story is about what happens when a comfortably upper-middle-class liberal couple in their 30s comes face to face with the consequences of globalization and capitalism on a beach in Nigeria. The publisher's marketing department have gone to a great deal of trouble to create an aura of mystery about the specifics of "what happens on the beach," to the point where they've oversold it. "What happens" is actually not as horrific as I was expecting. But even worse, it doesn't make sense. It's awfully hard to explain why without spoiling the plot, so all I'll say is that a character who was going to be murdered because they witnessed something is allowed to live. While this is imperative for the story and the plot, it flies in the face of both reality and the internal logic of the characters involved in that scene.

This contrived event leads to the rest of the book, which largely involves wealthy liberal white people looking deep into their hearts when confronted with an idealized African orphan needing their help. There are certain scenes that do work quite well, especially at the beginning, when we meet the title character and her little cohort of fellow asylum seekers. And the relationship between the British mother and her four year-old son is well-handled, and there's no doubt that Cleave manages to pull off some tearjerker scenes. However, the sociopolitical issues are clumsily handled and the book starts to slip away into la-la land toward the end. Indeed, it was the ending, in which the British woman insists on hauling her son and new friend back into an clearly dangerous situation Nigeria, that really turned me against the book. I suppose Cleave is trying to demonstrate the feebleness of good intentions, but it ends up all feeling fake.

Note: In the UK, the book was published under the title "On the Other Hand."