Review: Little Bee, by Chris Cleave

Cleave's second novel, Little Bee, tells the story of a sixteen year-old girl from Nigeria who has been orphaned by civil brutality.

If you focus on that first sentence closely, you will find the underlying premise of the novel. Little Bee delivers an extraordinary blow to the reader by delving into the painful truth of what happens when two regular, white, European tourists become involved in conflicts they don't understand when they blithely assume that their aura of Privilege will protect them from all that is ugly in the world during a holiday on the African continent. This misconception explodes when they meet Little Bee and her sister, fleeing from oil company soldiers, on a beach. The couple is faced with a choice; one acts, one does not, and the repercussions shower love, disaster, salvation and destruction on all present as the story moves from the Nigerian coast to the quiet suburbs of London.

One of the main themes of the novel is globalization, and the reader is left to ponder exactly what that means. What is globalization, really? Is it the action of incorporating all of humanity into one vast network, a web where we all are linked together in the striving for a better life? Or is it a disguise for colonization and commerce, the process of a powerful few taking what they want from the globe while simultaneously ridding themselves of the politically powerless who stand inconveniently in the way? Can average people have any effect at all? Cleve's focus on these silent questions, and what happens when average people try to intervene, make for a horrifying, beautiful tale that forces the reader to question his or her stance on what it means to be a human in a globally focused world.

Some of the scenes in Little Bee are quite graphic, particularly during the girl's tale of what happened on that beach after the couple, Sarah and her husband, Andrew, escape back to the resort. While awareness that these events are indicative of real horror around the world is important, readers should be ready to skim through that short chapter if necessary; those forging ahead should be prepared to be confronted with true nightmare.

Cleve tells the story through two alternating voices, those of Sarah and Little Bee, each revealing their particular perspective on events as tempered by their own cultural interpretation. Sarah is overwhelmed by guilt, regret, loss, and concern over her young son, whose own childish guilt and fear make him insist on dressing as Batman every day so he can fight off the 'baddies'. Little Bee looks at events through the lens of an outsider, one who tragically views every situation by first considering how she could kill herself should soldiers show up in the area. While Sarah is older in years, Little Bee is by far the older soul, and as the novel funnels downward, it is she who learns acceptance and ultimately acquiesces to fate, while Sarah struggles ever increasingly, like a fish caught in a net of naivete, tighter and tighter. Their ultimate return to the beach is the inevitable flowering of a poisonous plant.

Rating: SIX STARS out of five. Read this book.