Little Bee

Rating: 2+ (out of 5)

A colleague gave me this Chris Cleave book for Christmas and it kept me company throughout my 6-hour flight to California.

The book opens with a picture of a Nigerian girl barely out of her teens living in a refugee camp in the confines of London. As she describes her experiences, changing between somber, hopeful, and sarcastic tones, the reader is compelled towards laughter, pity, and mostly disgust. The reality of her story is both too cruel to be true and too heart-wrenching to ignore.

The author succeeded in piquing my interest to what was/is going on in Nigeria with the abuses committed by oil tycoons to the country's residents. He, however, failed to convince me that this book would make it to my list of favorites. The first few chapters were quite engaging but I didn't like how it all unravelled. Reading through the last chapters gave me a sense that the author wasn't quite sure how to wrap it all up and the ending ruined everything for me.

He did write some beautiful lines that I feel I should share with you, my dear readers.

"...and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means I survived." 

"Life is extremely short and you cannot dance to current affairs." 

"It was the month of May and there was warm sunshine dripping through the holes between the clouds, like the sky was a broken blue bowl and a child was trying to keep honey in it." 

"On our honeymoon we talked and talked. We stayed in a beachfront villa, and we drank rum and lemonade and talked so much that I never even noticed what color the sea was. Whenever I need to stop and remind myself how much I once loved Andrew, I only need to think about this. That the ocean covers seven tenths of the earth's surface, and yet my husband could make me not notice it." 

"We were exiles from reality that summer. We were refugees from ourselves."