Mom2TyZick's Full Review: Chris Cleave - Little Bee
We see the faces of people of different nationalities everyday; some speak our language perfectly while others struggle with the simplest words. This is the story of one brave immigrant of Nigeria, self-named Little Bee and the effect she had on the lives of those she met.
The book begins with a horrific scene on a Nigerian beach, but the story begins with the fallout from that scene. Sarah and her husband, Andrew are a young, hip white couple vacationing in Africa, trying to put their marriage together after an affair. It is here that they meet Little Bee and it changes both of their lives forever. Little Bee escapes to England where she is held in a detention center for two long years. She knows no one in this country, has no family upon whom to call. When she is released, she begins a journey that is tumultuous, terrifying, cleansing and redeeming.
Let me begin by getting my opinion out of the way first. I really didn’t like this book. It is well written. The imagery is rich. The characters well shaped. I stood alone in this opinion at my book club. The story was good…enough. I just wasn’t enraptured. I struggled to make it through.
The characters were very real, but I never cared about any of them. Not even Little Bee, which makes me feel just a little bit guilty. This girl had struggles that I’ve never even dreamed of, yet I can’t feel sympathy for her? The truth is, every character, except the little boy Charlie who refuses to take off his Batman costume, is so selfish it becomes hard to sympathize. Everyone has their own agenda and even though some do redeem themselves, it is only after too much has gone on to want to believe it. To give examples would be to tell too much about the plot, unfortunately.
This book has two narrators: Sarah and Little Bee. Both reveal parts about the other characters, and themselves, that we wouldn’t have been privy to with only one point of view. Still, it got a bit confusing at times, and didn’t engender any further feelings of closeness for having this extra viewpoint.
The imagery is something else altogether, and the saving grace of the story. Little Bee makes profound statements throughout the book that alert you to how wise she is for her young age, and what life experiences must have led her to her revelations. On page 9 she says “"We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.” How beautiful and honest.
Chris Cleave, the author, does a great job of telling Little Bee’s story of struggle. It was amazing and horrifying to learn of all she saw in her young life. She’d lived through so much that in every situation she found a way to kill herself should “the men come.” In her way, it gave her power over an otherwise out of control situation.
Perhaps my dislike of this book stems from my complete inability to connect with any of the characters because we are just so different. I’ve never had to deal with being an illegal immigrant in a country that hates me. I’ve never had an affair and abhor how casually it was treated here. I’ve never had to make life altering decisions for someone else. I don’t have to love the characters in a book, but I do like to find a connection. For me, Little Bee just didn’t make one.
From the author of the international bestseller Incendiary comes a haunting novel about the tenuous friendship that blooms between two disparate stran...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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