Little Bee - Hardcover

Cleave, Chris

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1416589635 ISBN 13: 9781416589631

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2009

Synopsis

The lives of a sixteen-year-old Nigerian orphan and a well-off British woman collide in this page-turning #1 New York Times bestseller and book club favorite from Chris Cleave.

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.

About this title

Review:

..".[an] immensely readable and moving second novel... The character and voice of Little Bee reveal Cleave at his finest... An affecting story of human triumph." -- New York Times Book Review

"Book clubs in search of the next Kite Runner need look no further than this astonishing, flawless novel... Cleave (Incendiary) effortlessly moves between alternating viewpoints with lucid, poignant prose and the occasional lighter note. A tension-filled dramatic ending and plenty of moral dilemmas add up to a satisfying, emotional read." -- Library Journal

"Little Bee will blow you away....In restrained, diamond-hard prose, Cleave alternates between these two characters' points of view as he pulls the threads of their dark -- but often funny -- story tight. What unfolds between them...is both surprising and inevitable, thoroughly satisfying if also heart-rending." -- Washington Post

"Utterly enthralling page-turner...Novelist Cleave does a brilliant job of making both characters not only believable but memorable....These compelling voices grip the reader's heart and do not let go even after the book's hyper-tense final page. Little Bee is a harrowing and heartening marvel of a novel." -- Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"Every now and then, you come across a character in a book whose personality is so salient and whose story carries such devastating emotional force it's as if she becomes a fixed part of your consciousness. So it is with the charmingly named title character in Chris Cleave's brilliant and unforgettable Little Bee..." -- The Oregonian

"Stunning." -- People (Four Stars and a People Pick)

"Cleave has a Zola-esque ability to write big and deeply....[he] makes the reader think about political issues and care about his characters." -- USA Today

"The voice that speaks from the first page of Chris Cleave's Little Bee is one you might never have heard -- the voice of a smart, wary, heartsick immigrant scarred by the terrors of her past....Read this urgent and wryly funny novel for its insights into simple humanity, the force that can disarm fear." -- O Magazine

..".Little Bee is a loud shout of talent." -- Chicago Sun-Times

"Vividly memorable and provocative...heartwarming and heartbreaking...Cleave paces the story beautifully, lacing it with wit, compassion, and, even at the darkest moments, a searing ray of hope." -- Boston Globe

From the Author:

I went to a concentration camp by mistake. I climbed into a minibus with half a dozen other casual labourers and they bussed us off at dawn, destination unknown. I was a student; this was a summer job. The previous day we'd been sanitising toilets. The day before that we'd painted an underpass in child-friendly colours. My hands were still flecked with cerulean blue.

They waved us through a razor-wire perimeter fence, and then another and another. We were asking each other, why the high security? What are we daubing in bright colours today - Britain's nuclear deterrent? Now thin brown people appeared through the grey mist, fingers clawing the wire, imploring us as we passed. The minibus stopped and we were pushed through a crush of anxious men, pleading and remonstrating in half the languages on earth.

The place was Campsfield House Immigration Removal Centre and it turned out we were there to serve canteen meals to dead men walking. True story. I spent the next three days slapping down scoops of mashed potato onto the plastic plates of Somalis, Sierra Leonians and others so traumatised that their nationalities could not be ascertained. The asylum seekers ate with plastic spoons. It would have been brave to provide men in their predicament with anything sharper.

I learned that there are nearly a dozen concentration camps in Britain today. The Home Office calls them `immigration removal centres' and I guess, since they pay for the razor wire and the plastic spoons, they get to call them what they like. The inmates are rounded up in dawn raids, having committed no evil other than to flee for their lives and seek asylum in the UK, which they are legally entitled to do. After detention in heartbreaking conditions, thousands each year are deported to countries where it is well known that many will be tortured and killed. Forgive me, but this thing we do to preserve Britain's character - it doesn't seem terribly British.

I wrote this novel because of two people I met in that place. The first, an Angolan, showed me a tiny photograph of his daughter. He said, She will starve if they deport me. Can you help? Both of us were crying. What could I do? I asked him if he wanted the carrots or the peas.

The second person, arriving at the head of the canteen queue, told me the following joke in his mellifluous Nigerian English: An asylum seeker goes to a nice hotel and he asks the barman, Sir, can you recommend me a fine port? And the barman says, Yes, Dover, now fuck off back home!

And somehow, in that terrible place, we were laughing.

I wrote those two characters - the tragic and the defiantly funny - into one brave Nigerian girl, Little Bee. She turns up on the doorstep of a slightly lost English woman one morning and simply asks, Can you help? I wanted to explore whether two such souls could save one other. I wanted to discover where, in our world and in the human heart, a person could truly find refuge. I hope you will enjoy the novel.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1416589635
• ISBN 13: 9781416589631
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 271