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| | Description | We don't want to tell you too much about this book. It is a truly special story and we don't want to spoil it. Nevertheless, you need to know something, so we will just say this: It is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific. The story starts there, but the book doesn't. And it's what happens afterward that is most important. Once you have read it, you'll want to tell everyone about it. When you do, please don't tell them what happens either. The magic is in how it unfolds. | |
| | Product Details | | Author: | Chris Cleave | | Paperback: | 271 pages | | Publisher: | Simon & Schuster | | Publication Date: | February 16, 2010 | | Language: | English | | ISBN: | 1416589643 | | Product Length: | 8.51 inches | | Product Width: | 5.55 inches | | Product Height: | 0.83 inches | | Product Weight: | 0.63 pounds | | Package Length: | 8.2 inches | | Package Width: | 5.3 inches | | Package Height: | 1.0 inches | | Package Weight: | 0.65 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 620 reviews |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 620 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1616 of 1638 found the following review helpful:
 For heaven's sake ignore the blurb! May 13, 2009
By Tracy Rowan
"dargelos"
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.
180 of 189 found the following review helpful:
 The Other Hand Mar 01, 2009
By Syke27
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.
311 of 332 found the following review helpful:
What Happened on the Beach?! Jan 02, 2009
By Mary Lins
"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.
60 of 63 found the following review helpful:
Making a beautiful life in a broken world Jan 29, 2009
By beckyjean
"beckyjean"
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.
202 of 232 found the following review helpful:
 Insensitive, Insulting and Inconsistent May 05, 2010
By Melanie Leblanc
I was admittedly drawn in by the jacket cover of the novel "Little Bee" by Chris Cleave, where a simple sales pitch was made:
"We don't want to tell you too much about this book. It is truly special story and we don't want to spoil it. Nevertheless, you need to know something , so we will just say this: This is the story of two women. Their lives collide one fateful day, and one of them has to make a terrible choice. Two years later, they meet again. The story starts there. Once you have read it you'll want to tell everyone about it. When you do, please don't tell them what happens. The magic is in how it unfolds."
These publishers knew what they were doing, as it is unlikely that I am the only person who purchased this novel because of the lure of this mysterious description. Unfortunately, the novel fell short of being at all special or magical. In fact, upon discovery of the true subject of this novel, I now reflect and find this description to be incredibly insensitive to the issues relevant to oil and conflict, and those of asylum seeking refugees. It is a mockery made of the stories of the 42 million refugees and internally displaced people living across the globe. This, however, is not the least of Chris Cleave's problems contained within the pages of his novel.
Cleave is very strategic in the initial 100 pages of his novel. He repeatedly refers to a life-changing event, one that each character can neither forget nor recover from, but does not disclose any details of the actual event; only that it took place on a beach in Nigeria. Because of the reader's eagerness to discover what it was that happened on the beach, and how it was that these characters became connected, his poor writing style and weak character development goes largely unnoticed. It is once the beach scene is revealed, and the pages are turned a little slower, that one can begin to dissect Cleave's poor narrative.
His characters are absolutely inconsistent and unbelievable, with no exceptions. At times, Cleave portrays Little Bee as a confused Nigerian village girl who knows not of Western technology, and then later she is a young girl in Nigeria dreaming of refrigerators and washing machines. In one chapter, Little Bee, never having seen a telephone before - and in fact at one point making conjectures as to how "voice transmission" between people works - is able to almost effortlessly delete a contact number on Sarah's cell phone when the phone is placed in her hand. Later however, she describes getting on a train for the first time and figuring out where to sit to be a difficult task. At times her transition into life in the UK is made to seem easy, which is another item with which I take great issue. Cleave has clearly not done his research on the settlement and immigration experience.
The character description of Sarah is similarly conflicting and uneven in a number of respects. For example, Cleave contradicts himself often when describing her feelings for her husband versus her lover. On one page, she says there was a time her husband Andrew could make her "forget one third of the earth" as the ocean goes unnoticed on their honeymoon. Then on another page, she says that she feels for Lawrence in a way that she has never before felt for Andrew and suggests that there was never any love between her and her husband. Similarly, she invites, or rather insists, that Little Bee stay with her but Little Bee hesitates. Then a few pages later, when Little Bee accepts Sarah's offer and suggests moving in with her, she is taken aback, and it is as though this suggestion comes as a surprise.
Cleave's development of each character and of the plot is just plain weak. As the novel carries on, the dialogue becomes worse and worse, and it seems that Cleave does not know where to end this story (though in my opinion, it should have ended much sooner than it did). I have not and will not be recommending this book to anyone and it is incredibly disappointing that the book critics of today are hailing this piece of "literature" and comparing the author to the likes of Ian McEwan and Khaled Hosseini.
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