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3.63 AVERAGE
3.63 AVERAGE
I liked this book, but at times, I felt the writing was super self-indulgent. Beautiful, yes, but also just very contrived and unrealistic under the circumstances. So I was kept outside the story because of how implausible the observations and thought processes were for both Sarah and Little Bee, but more so for Little Bee. She is an extraordinary person, yes, but to put that much on a young Nigerian refugee girl seemed a little hyperbolic. No doubt beautiful writing and observations, overall, but still. Maybe I am just envious, hah.
And also, how much is sort of just made up by a white man to put onto a white woman and a girl of color? I know research was done, but I want to be like, "Is it really his story to tell?" But he did, after all, tell it, and he told it in a striking way, so it was indeed his story, but the word "appropriation" also comes up for me. Just my feelings.
"On the girl's brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, 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." pg. 9 !!!
"She was whispering into it in some language that sounded like butterflies drowning in honey." pg. 13
"The only souvenir I have of that first meeting is an absence where the middle finger of my left hand used to be. The amputation is quite clean. In place of my finger is a stump, a phantom digit that used to be responsible for the E, D, and C, keys on my laptop. I can't rely on E, D, and C anymore. They go missing when I need them most. Pleased becomes please. Ecstasies becomes stasis." pg. 25
"Everything was happiness and singing when I was a little girl. There was plenty of time for it. We did not have hurry. We did not have electricity or fresh water or sadness either, because none of these had been connected to our village yet." pg. 78
"I do not know why the small puddle of urine made me start to cry. I do not know why the mind chooses these small things to break itself on." pg. 79
"In the quiet of the garden then the robin shook his worm, and swallowed its life from the light into darkness with the quick indifference of a god. I felt nothing at all." pg. 94
"Still shaking, in the pew, I understood that it isn't the dead we cry for. We cry for ourselves, and I didn't deserve my own pity." pg. 96
"I was in a daze. I remember on the flight home to London that it vaguely surprised me, just as it had at the end of my childhood, that such a big story could simply continue without me. But that is the way it is with killers, I suppose. What is the end of all innocence for you is just another Tuesday morning for them, and they walk off back to their planet of death giving no more thought to the world of the living than we would give to any other tourist destination: a place to be briefly visited and returned from with souvenirs and a haunting sensation what we could have paid less for them." pg. 124-125
"It is not because anyone wants to keep my continent in ignorance. It is because nobody has the time to sit down and explain the first world from first principles. Or maybe you would like to, but you can't. Your culture has become sophisticated, like a computer, or a drug that you take for a headache. You can use it, but you cannot explain how it works. Certainly not to girls who stack up their firewood against the side of the house." pg. 128
"Three weeks and five thousand miles on a tea ship--maybe if you scratched me you would still find that my skin smells of it. When they put me in the immigration detention center, they gave me a brown blanket and a white plastic cup of tea. And when I tasted it, all I wanted to do was to get back into the boat and go home again, to my country. Tea is the taste of my land: it is bitter and warm, strong, and sharp with memory. It tastes of longing. It tastes 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. It disappears, like plantations stretching up into the mist. I have heard that your country drinks more tea than any other. How sad that must make you--like children who long for absent mothers. I am sorry." pg. 129
"I felt adrenaline aching in my chest. This thing that was happening, then, it had apparently slipped quite subtly over some line. It had become something acknowledged, albeit in a relatively controlled form that both of us could still step back from. Here it was, if we wanted it, hanging from a taut umbilicus between us: an affair between adults, minute yet fully formed, with all its forbidden trysts and muffled paroxysms and shattering betrayals already present, like the buds of fingers and toes." pg. 156
"The gasoline flowing through the pump made a high-pitched sound, as if the screaming of my family was still dissolved in it. The nozzle of the gasoline hose went right inside the fuel tank of Sarah's car, so that the transfer of the fluid was hidden. I still do not know what gasoline truly looks like. If it looks the way it smells on a rainy morning, then I suppose it must flash like the most brilliant happiness, so intense that you would go blind or crazy if you even looked at it. Maybe that is why they do not let us see gasoline." pg. 181
"An aching panic took me over. The sophisticated parts of my mind shut down, the parts that might be capable of thought. I suppose the blood supply to them had been summarily turned off, and diverted to the eyes, the legs, the lungs. I looked, I ran, I screamed. And all the time in my heart it was growing: the unspeakable certainty that someone had taken Charlie." pg. 235
Book: borrowed from the SSF Main Library.
And also, how much is sort of just made up by a white man to put onto a white woman and a girl of color? I know research was done, but I want to be like, "Is it really his story to tell?" But he did, after all, tell it, and he told it in a striking way, so it was indeed his story, but the word "appropriation" also comes up for me. Just my feelings.
"On the girl's brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, 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." pg. 9 !!!
"She was whispering into it in some language that sounded like butterflies drowning in honey." pg. 13
"The only souvenir I have of that first meeting is an absence where the middle finger of my left hand used to be. The amputation is quite clean. In place of my finger is a stump, a phantom digit that used to be responsible for the E, D, and C, keys on my laptop. I can't rely on E, D, and C anymore. They go missing when I need them most. Pleased becomes please. Ecstasies becomes stasis." pg. 25
"Everything was happiness and singing when I was a little girl. There was plenty of time for it. We did not have hurry. We did not have electricity or fresh water or sadness either, because none of these had been connected to our village yet." pg. 78
"I do not know why the small puddle of urine made me start to cry. I do not know why the mind chooses these small things to break itself on." pg. 79
"In the quiet of the garden then the robin shook his worm, and swallowed its life from the light into darkness with the quick indifference of a god. I felt nothing at all." pg. 94
"Still shaking, in the pew, I understood that it isn't the dead we cry for. We cry for ourselves, and I didn't deserve my own pity." pg. 96
"I was in a daze. I remember on the flight home to London that it vaguely surprised me, just as it had at the end of my childhood, that such a big story could simply continue without me. But that is the way it is with killers, I suppose. What is the end of all innocence for you is just another Tuesday morning for them, and they walk off back to their planet of death giving no more thought to the world of the living than we would give to any other tourist destination: a place to be briefly visited and returned from with souvenirs and a haunting sensation what we could have paid less for them." pg. 124-125
"It is not because anyone wants to keep my continent in ignorance. It is because nobody has the time to sit down and explain the first world from first principles. Or maybe you would like to, but you can't. Your culture has become sophisticated, like a computer, or a drug that you take for a headache. You can use it, but you cannot explain how it works. Certainly not to girls who stack up their firewood against the side of the house." pg. 128
"Three weeks and five thousand miles on a tea ship--maybe if you scratched me you would still find that my skin smells of it. When they put me in the immigration detention center, they gave me a brown blanket and a white plastic cup of tea. And when I tasted it, all I wanted to do was to get back into the boat and go home again, to my country. Tea is the taste of my land: it is bitter and warm, strong, and sharp with memory. It tastes of longing. It tastes 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. It disappears, like plantations stretching up into the mist. I have heard that your country drinks more tea than any other. How sad that must make you--like children who long for absent mothers. I am sorry." pg. 129
"I felt adrenaline aching in my chest. This thing that was happening, then, it had apparently slipped quite subtly over some line. It had become something acknowledged, albeit in a relatively controlled form that both of us could still step back from. Here it was, if we wanted it, hanging from a taut umbilicus between us: an affair between adults, minute yet fully formed, with all its forbidden trysts and muffled paroxysms and shattering betrayals already present, like the buds of fingers and toes." pg. 156
"The gasoline flowing through the pump made a high-pitched sound, as if the screaming of my family was still dissolved in it. The nozzle of the gasoline hose went right inside the fuel tank of Sarah's car, so that the transfer of the fluid was hidden. I still do not know what gasoline truly looks like. If it looks the way it smells on a rainy morning, then I suppose it must flash like the most brilliant happiness, so intense that you would go blind or crazy if you even looked at it. Maybe that is why they do not let us see gasoline." pg. 181
"An aching panic took me over. The sophisticated parts of my mind shut down, the parts that might be capable of thought. I suppose the blood supply to them had been summarily turned off, and diverted to the eyes, the legs, the lungs. I looked, I ran, I screamed. And all the time in my heart it was growing: the unspeakable certainty that someone had taken Charlie." pg. 235
Book: borrowed from the SSF Main Library.
I picked this up at a thrift store and wasn’t expecting to like it as much as I did. This read is shocking, disconcerting and unforgettable. It would be a real eye opener for anyone who does not understand why so many immigrants seek asylum outside the borders of their native country. Although this is set against a background of violence, I commend Cleave for the keeping the goriness of things to an absolute minimum.
Two lives unexpectedly intersect on a beach in Nigeria and are forever changed. Sarah Summers of Britain is a magazine executive. She and her husband’s (Andrew O’Rourke) relationship unraveled after the birth of their son, Charlie. In an attempt to save it, they travel to an out of the way location, but what happens there further divides them.
Udo, is a young Nigerian woman who fled her village in the jungle with her sister, Nkiruka when militia commissioned by a foreign oil company destroyed it after it was discovered to be located above an oil rich deposit. She was lucky to escape with her life, hid herself on a cargo ship and arrived in Britain. She was immediately sent to British immigration center where she was detained for two years. Cleave brings her to life on these pages and gives her an unforgettable character. She is honest, outspoken, bright, and wise far beyond her years. I was in awe of her strength, fortitude and attitude.
Charlie is the perfect balance to the gravitas of the matter. I smiled at his batman antics and words.
Two lives unexpectedly intersect on a beach in Nigeria and are forever changed. Sarah Summers of Britain is a magazine executive. She and her husband’s (Andrew O’Rourke) relationship unraveled after the birth of their son, Charlie. In an attempt to save it, they travel to an out of the way location, but what happens there further divides them.
Udo, is a young Nigerian woman who fled her village in the jungle with her sister, Nkiruka when militia commissioned by a foreign oil company destroyed it after it was discovered to be located above an oil rich deposit. She was lucky to escape with her life, hid herself on a cargo ship and arrived in Britain. She was immediately sent to British immigration center where she was detained for two years. Cleave brings her to life on these pages and gives her an unforgettable character. She is honest, outspoken, bright, and wise far beyond her years. I was in awe of her strength, fortitude and attitude.
Charlie is the perfect balance to the gravitas of the matter. I smiled at his batman antics and words.
I agree with other reviewers who say that you shouldn't learn too much about this book before you read it. The story unfolds for us slowly, as we see past and present from the perspective of two completely different women. I didn't like the ending, though it was hotly debated in my book club. There were also relationships between primary and secondary characters that I couldn't compeltely understand or sympathize with. Mostly, however, it was a compelling story. (Hence the 4 stars even though I'm picking at it.)
I don’t even know what to say about this book. It was A LOT.
This was a very depressing, but beautiful read. I'm glad I read it, but I won't be reading it again.
I wanted to read this book because of the description, but after reading, I don't exactly understand why the description had to be so ambiguous. I enjoyed Little Bee; I liked how the chapters flipped points of view and the whole premise, but the ending just bothered me. I felt it was slightly rushed and it didn't exactly conclude the story. Overall, I have to give it three stars for all that it does well, despite the ending
I *just* finished reading this. I have mixed feelings on this book, but based on the fact that I couldn't put it down, I give it a 4 out of 5. The first half of the book is magical. During the second half, something about the pace and the depth of the story and characters changes--not for the better. The first half was a dreamy, lyrical, and thoughtful reflection on how Sarah & Little Bee came to be in each others' lives while the second half moved at a gallop as they try to address the here-and-now of their lives together.
My inner jury is also still out on the function of Lawrence. I suppose that just as Little Bee has her flaws, Lawrence is one of Sarah's flaws.
This story has me tangled up in thoughts on racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, and the foolish thought that white privilege can beat the system. You know, the typical privileged white woman saves black woman story? Nothing pisses me off more and that is a primary part of the narrative here. But, alas, the system wins--which is also depressing as all heck.
It's a nicely done story, but if you are looking for a tidy happy ending, look elsewhere. If you want a well-written story that will trigger a multitude of thoughts on the relationships between and among women, men, children, politics, and oppression, this might do it for you.
As an aside, I checked this out from the library and found a child's rendering of his/her family folded up and tucked into the pages. It's a pretty terrific drawing--so much so that I don't know what to do with it.
My inner jury is also still out on the function of Lawrence. I suppose that just as Little Bee has her flaws, Lawrence is one of Sarah's flaws.
This story has me tangled up in thoughts on racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, and the foolish thought that white privilege can beat the system. You know, the typical privileged white woman saves black woman story? Nothing pisses me off more and that is a primary part of the narrative here. But, alas, the system wins--which is also depressing as all heck.
It's a nicely done story, but if you are looking for a tidy happy ending, look elsewhere. If you want a well-written story that will trigger a multitude of thoughts on the relationships between and among women, men, children, politics, and oppression, this might do it for you.
As an aside, I checked this out from the library and found a child's rendering of his/her family folded up and tucked into the pages. It's a pretty terrific drawing--so much so that I don't know what to do with it.
This was not what I was expecting and was a little too harsh for me. Very powerful book with a political message.
