Erin's Book #20: Little Bee by Chris Cleave

In lieu of an actual synopsis, the back of Little Bee reads, "This is the story of two women. Their lives collide one fateful day, and one of them has to make a terrible choice, the kind of choice we hope you never have to face. Two years later, they meet again - the story starts there... Once you have read it, you'll want to tell your friends about it. When you do, please don't tell them what happens. The magic is in how the story unfolds."

Intriguing, no? Only Little Bee doesn't quite live up to all that hype. The story follows a British magazine editor named Sarah and a 16-year-old Nigerian refugee named Little Bee. Their history is revealed slowly. The chapters alternate between Sarah and Little Bee, each woman's story sometimes jumping around in time, but not in a confusing way at all. We learn early on that Little Bee met Sarah and her husband on a beach in Nigeria and something tragic and presumably life-altering happens, though we aren't sure what.

I wish the publishers hadn't built it up so much. It was sort of like the book version of an M. Night Shyamalan film, where you know there's going to be a big twist so you keep looking for it and it usually doesn't measure up to the expectations. It's pretty easy to figure out the gist of what happened and while it is shocking to actually hear the story, it's not altogether surprising. More details emerge as the story moves on and I certainly didn't see all of them coming.

Some of the implicit issues/ideas are interesting. Much of the plot is very cause-and-effect. Each of Sarah's decisions directly lead to the next event and so on, so if one of those things had happened differently, she and Little Bee would never have crossed paths. I didn't really think of this until later, but, keeping in mind our current immigration debate, Little Bee is a great reminder that we never know what people are running from and what might happen to them if they're forced to return to the country they fled.

Altogether, I enjoyed this book immensely. I think it's the first book I've ever taken to the gym and tried to read on the elliptical so I wouldn't feel guilty about needing to finish it at 11:00 on a Wednesday. Cleave builds the suspense naturally without it being overkill, so I think the publisher's note on the back is unnecessary and detrimental. It's an intriguing story and again, I learned about a place with which I wasn't familiar (Nigeria and the bloody war for oil). Worth reading, but not earth-shattering. And certainly not as light as the cover might indicate.