The back of
Little Bee by Chris Cleave just says this:
"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."
And I agree on all parts. So first, I should say -- go out and read it. It only took me a week, sans-snow days, so it can't be too difficult or too long. Then come back and read the rest of this.
To first touch on what the publishers mentioned -- it really was a funny book, but that's not the overall tone, so I wouldn't have thought of that on my own without rereading the back afterward. The cultural juxtapositions were more than necessary for character consistency; they poked fun at Western society just enough to make me stop and think a moment. And the interactions with Charlie/Batman often made me laugh out loud. The beach scene would've made me cry if I hadn't been in the laundry room reading it. I certainly didn't breathe while I read it.
In the beach scene, I felt the "intellectual jet lag" that Sarah tells us she felt. It was difficult to read, so it was easier to file the it away in my mind with all of the violence in
The Hunger Games, as events that haven't really happened. But events like the beach scene
have happened,
are happening. I think that I subconsciously did file them there until Little Bee told us how her sister died, and then suddenly I couldn't help but think of what I would do if Tina and I were there. Talk about not being able to breathe. (Luckily I was back to the apt by then.) Me and Tina. Running from real hunters, real men who only cared about eliminating evidence. And then, I think, the book finally had the impact on me that it was meant to.
In an interview included at the end of the book, Cleave says that "the reader might justifiably side with either Andrew or Sarah." I agree, I think. I'm not sure, and I think that's the point. There were too many factors -- too many realistic factors -- involved for me to take a side, either on the beach or back in England. I didn't become particularly attached to either of them (Andrew didn't really have a chance with me, since Sarah and Little Bee do all of the narration), until after Sarah flew back with Little Bee.
Then I was attached to Sarah as much as I had been to Little Bee all along, and by then we only heard from Sarah through Little Bee.
This time, I was given little to no ending, nothing in terms of solid details of how everyone fairs after the last page. This time, though, I was grateful. More details might keep me from playing out the different possibilities, and in doing so, I'd forget that the two weeks the three spent together isn't a likely ending for anyone in Bee's situation. Here the lack of ending doesn't mean a lack of closure: Little Bee sees, there on the beach with Charlie and the village children, a glimpse of what would be ideal. It doesn't happen, because it hasn't happened yet, and will likely be quite some time before it does.
I loved Little Bee's description of tea -- perhaps because I'm an avid tea drinker, but I think because it surprisingly made sense to me. She says that tea "tastes of longing...of the distance between where you are and where you come from. Also it vanishes -- the taste of it vanishes from your tongue while your lips are still hot from the cup." I'm not far from where I grew up, but that doesn't mean I don't long for places of my childhood, of my adolescence. This morning as I drank my hot tea, I considered her words, and I agree -- tea leaves you without a distinct flavor, but only the sense that something was once there. Hence the longing, I suppose.
Overall, I liked Little Bee's discussion with Charlie at the river the most. We might be tempted to shrug off Charlie's belief that staying in his Batman costume will keep everyone he knows safe, but don't we all think like that every now and then? Or, at the very least, wish that we had something that would work that way? And do we ever find ourselves making the assumption that Charlie makes, that all individuals can be strictly categorized as either a "goody or a baddy"? Sometimes we need to be reminded by our own Little Bees that some baddies are right inside us, and that those are often the most difficult baddies to fight.
