If there's ever a book that your book club will be divided about, it's Little Bee: A Novel .
It was not what I expected, as it is described on the book flap as a “truly special story,” which makes me think of unicorns, an unlimited book budget and other flights of fancy. But as one of my sister’s friends said, “beware of anything described as ‘special'."
Without giving anything away, the book veers between two perspectives: that of Little Bee herself, a Nigerian refugee who is released from a British immigration detention center at the story's onset; and Sarah, a successful British editor, mother and wife in a floundering marriage. The two women met on a beach in Nigeria, while Sarah and her husband are on holiday, and let's just say that you won't want to make Nigeria your next travel destination spot. Given the horrors Little Bee has faced, you root for her to survive. While Sarah is far from a sympathetic character, Little Bee herself is a vibrant heroine, who does things like always figure out a way to kill herself “in case the men come.” She's learned to speak "the Queen's English" in the detention center, which gives Cleave ample material in exploring phrases, customs and cultural differences between Little Bee's new life in England and that of "the girls back home." In addition the relationship between Little Bee and Sarah’s son Charlie, who refuses to take off his Batman costume, is poignant.
There are parts of the book that are graphic enough that I flinched. Yet it never felt exploitive. I’ve been struggling with why I feel that the violence here feels awful yet appropriate, yet I’m bothered by it in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium Trilogy) . The best answer I can give is that I don’t think you can have it both ways: if your use of rape and violence is making a broader point about refugees and Western culture, as Cleave has done, you are putting your stake into the ground in saying "this is not okay." And I can’t get too critical of anything that makes more people aware of what refugees go through in order to escape terror in their native countries. Along those lines, while I believe Larsson considered himself a feminist, you don’t get to be sanctimonious about how many Swedish women are abused yet have a woman choking to death on a sanitary napkin.
But back to the author with greater talent. I recommend Little Bee: A Novel with a caveat: know that it's beautifully written and occasionally funny, but ultimately sad. I mention this because of the amount of reviews on Amazon commenting on how Little Bee: A Novel was way darker than what they were expecting. Of course, that also begs the question of whether you really were expecting the story of a Nigerian refugee's survival to be a laugh riot.
