In the opening chapters of Chris Cleaves' gripping second novel, a well-to-do British couple are forced to decide whether or not to engage in the future of a young Nigerian immigrant they met in Africa two years previously under horrific circumstances. Alone, penniless, and lacking legal immigration papers through no fault of her own, Little Bee has traced Sarah and Andrew to their posh home in a London suburb using a plastic driver's license that Andrew dropped during their fatal encounter on a Nigerian beach.
Little Bee's reappearance shakes the couple to their core. They both assumed she was dead, and they've been feverishly attempting to banish "the incident" from their lives, pursuing hectic journalistic careers in hopes that what happened in Africa would stay in Africa. Andrew's post traumatic stress syndrome presents itself in the form of guilt, depression, and self-loathing. For him, Little Bee is a kind of retributive apparition he longs to scrub from his mental landscape. Sarah, however, made an intensely personal investment in Little Bee's welfare that day on the beach two years before, and her altruistic instincts pull her towards further acts of sacrifice for Little Bee even as she realizes that her career, mental health, and ability to mother her own young son may suffer in the bargain.
Sarah's desire to help Little Bee is understandable, for Little Bee is one of the most compelling fictional characters you'll have the fortune to meet this year. Chris Cleave narrates the bulk of the story in Little Bee's voice, and she is utterly charming. Wise beyond her years and yet appealingly naive in her fresh-eyed take on British culture, she exudes the kind of dignified goodness that tempts you to share time with her in hopes that her essential decency and resilience will somehow transfer to your own soul. You'll become as acutely invested in her well being as Sarah, and therein lies the rub. Just as Little Bee's reappearance forced Sarah and Andrew to realize that time and distance couldn't isolate them from the human tragedies that afflict Africa, reading the book Little Bee forces the reader to confront the brutal realities of Africa on a personal level. The death and suffering of thousands is so incomprehensible that the mind refuses to absorb it; the plight of a single sixteen year old Nigerian girl will break your heart.
Cleaves' novel is not unrelentingly dark. Little Bee has a droll sense of humor, and her playful observations about the contrast between African and British culture add light relief to the story. Cleave invites the reader to smile as Little Bee looks back upon her village's annual film festival, one glorious night each year in which the same film -- Top Gun -- was projected on a white sheet in the village square. Since the film was in English, the plot was a mystery to its viewers, but the villagers gazed in wonder at "The Man Who Had To Go Everywhere Very Fast," and spent hours afterward debating why getting everywhere quickly seemed to be so important to the young white boys in the picture. The mental image that Cleave creates in the reader's mind -- laughing villagers reveling in such a simple, repeated pleasure, beautiful in their happiness with so little -- sweeps the reader into caring about the future of these people, and that's simultaneously uplifting and devastating.
I highly recommend this book. I listened to the book on compact disc, and the narrator -- Anne Flosnik -- did an outstanding job. Her measured, elegant evocation of Little Bee's Nigerian-accented English, grammatically perfect and yet bearing the deep, rounded lilt of Africa, was stunning.
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