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teaforazathoth's review
emotional
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
elenasquareeyes's review against another edition
3.0
Fourteen-year-old Beka and her best friend Toycie (who’s seventeen) are on the cusp of adulthood. They have family, school and boys to contend with as their home and everyone they know have to deal with the political upheaval as Belize strives towards independence.
Beka Lamb is set in the early 1950s and at this point Belize was a British colony. Throughout the novel there’s mentions of different political parties, how products coming from different countries mean different things, and Beka’s grandmother is heavily involved and up to date with the meetings that are happening in town. I knew nothing of Belize’s history before reading Beka Lamb and the way the politics of the country are interwoven in the story made things easy to understand and gave context to the reasons why characters said and did certain things. Having the story be from Beka’s point of view meant that there was almost a naivety to it at times as she had a lot of growing up to do.
As well as the political upheaval Beka’s family are living through there’s also how the Catholic church is a dominating presence in their lives – especially Beka and Toycie’s as the school they go to is run by nuns. The influence the women at the school have over them and the wider society can’t be underestimated. When Beka’s father asks them for help or even understanding when a situation arises, they refuse saying it’s a slight upon the school and their values.
The friendship between Beka and Toycie is the really heart of this story. Even though there’s three years between them they are really close and help each other in different ways. Toycie can help Beka with her school work while Beka will be a sometimes-reluctant alibi when Toycie wants to sneak out to see a boy. The differences in their homelives are glaring but also shows how strong their friendship is as there’s no resentment from Toycie. Beka lives with her parents, young brothers and her grandmother and while not well-off they don’t struggle financially. Toycie on the other hand lives with her aunt and she does struggle to provide for Toycie and is clearly living below the poverty line.
Beka Lamb is a pretty standard coming of age story; Beka tries to find her voice, do well in school, and stop lying. Having this story set in Belize and in a time of political and social upheaval adds extra layers to Beka’s story and while some thing’s are universal, others are deeply personal.
Beka Lamb is set in the early 1950s and at this point Belize was a British colony. Throughout the novel there’s mentions of different political parties, how products coming from different countries mean different things, and Beka’s grandmother is heavily involved and up to date with the meetings that are happening in town. I knew nothing of Belize’s history before reading Beka Lamb and the way the politics of the country are interwoven in the story made things easy to understand and gave context to the reasons why characters said and did certain things. Having the story be from Beka’s point of view meant that there was almost a naivety to it at times as she had a lot of growing up to do.
As well as the political upheaval Beka’s family are living through there’s also how the Catholic church is a dominating presence in their lives – especially Beka and Toycie’s as the school they go to is run by nuns. The influence the women at the school have over them and the wider society can’t be underestimated. When Beka’s father asks them for help or even understanding when a situation arises, they refuse saying it’s a slight upon the school and their values.
The friendship between Beka and Toycie is the really heart of this story. Even though there’s three years between them they are really close and help each other in different ways. Toycie can help Beka with her school work while Beka will be a sometimes-reluctant alibi when Toycie wants to sneak out to see a boy. The differences in their homelives are glaring but also shows how strong their friendship is as there’s no resentment from Toycie. Beka lives with her parents, young brothers and her grandmother and while not well-off they don’t struggle financially. Toycie on the other hand lives with her aunt and she does struggle to provide for Toycie and is clearly living below the poverty line.
Beka Lamb is a pretty standard coming of age story; Beka tries to find her voice, do well in school, and stop lying. Having this story set in Belize and in a time of political and social upheaval adds extra layers to Beka’s story and while some thing’s are universal, others are deeply personal.
serendipitysbooks's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
My next pick was a Beka Lamb, a story from Belize which centres on the coming of age of both girl and country and takes place over just a few months. I thought the author did a great job using the senses to recreate the essence Belize on paper; depictions of the food, animals, dialect and local myths all helped transport me there. The portrayal of the hurricane was especially powerful, and left me feeling relieved I was only there vicariously! One of the things that struck me as I was reading was the double standard regarding teen pregnancy out of wedlock. Beka’s friend Toycie became pregnant, was judged harshly and forced out of school; denied the opportunity to return even after the baby was born whereas the boy faced no repercussions and enjoyed an enhanced status among his peers. It’s an old and common story, certainly indicative of its time but infuriating all the same. When Toycie ended up in hospital the lack of resources and even basic cleanliness was startling, and highlighted the differences between the haves and the have-nots, itself a manifestation of colonialism. The role and influence of the Catholic Church was another aspect that caught my attention. This was a solid read, one which gave me an historic taste of a country I know next to nothing about. However, I did find the character and story arc of Toycie more compelling than that of the titular Beka.
kimiwriter's review
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Content Warnings
Minor: Child death, Death, Vomit, Suicide attempt, Sexism, Racism, Misogyny, Miscarriage, Mental illness, and Grief
Most of this is surrounding Beka's best friend and what happens to her throughout the book.harryr's review
2.0
Beka Lamb tells the story of a few months in the life of a fourteen-year-old girl — Beka — and her slightly older friend Toycie, who both attend a convent school in Belize. It’s published as part of the Heinemann Caribbean Writers Series, and so it has one of those rather off-puttingly institutional covers that makes me feel like I’m back in school. And indeed I’m sure it works well as a GCSE set text: it’s short, it’s about a teenager, it has lots of themes that would provide material for classroom discussion (race, class, politics, colonialism, teenage pregnancy) and it has lots of local colour.
Saturday, pay day for many families, was the biggest marketing, house-cleaning, and cooking day of the week. women and girls, whether they lived in a ‘good house’ or a ‘dawg-siddown’ scrubbed, dusted, polished and cooked in order that they might do as they pleased Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, satisfied that their duty, as best as could be managed with what was available, had been done.
Lunch on a Saturday was mostly crushed avocado or potted meat sandwiches, with perhaps pounded calves’ liver fried with lots of onions and creole bread for six o’clock tea. But the intense activity, and the smells of what was to come on Sunday noon, assuaged the need for bigger meals. In the houses of even the poorest, at the very least red kidney beans and bits of salty pigtails stewed on outdoor fire hearths waiting for the addition of raw rice, assiduously picked over for stones, and washed several times until the water ran clear. And in the houses of those that could better afford it, chickens, pork, or beef roasted in ovens; great pots of grey-black relleno soup thickened on stoves with a dozen hard-boild eggs per pot bobbing up and down like dumplings, and the corn mills of the town ground busily in preparation for the mounds of tortillas that would be needed the following day. Seafood and groundfood were rarely cooked on Sundays: fish, crayfish, conch, yams, cocoa, sweet potatoes, breadfruit and the like were everyday fare.
In fact I think it’s a quirk of a certain kind of post-colonial novel to almost overdo the local colour. The book is absolutely full of references to foodstuffs, flowers and trees, bits of local tradition, references to history; it’s like one long assertion of Belizeyness. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing; in fact I enjoy all that stuff (particularly the food!). It’s just an observation of a phase that, perhaps, national literatures tend to go through.
I did enjoy this book, btw, so I hope my comments don’t across as negative. I enjoyed all the descriptive stuff, found the story engaging, and learn at least slightly more about Belize than I knew before. So that’s all good.
Saturday, pay day for many families, was the biggest marketing, house-cleaning, and cooking day of the week. women and girls, whether they lived in a ‘good house’ or a ‘dawg-siddown’ scrubbed, dusted, polished and cooked in order that they might do as they pleased Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, satisfied that their duty, as best as could be managed with what was available, had been done.
Lunch on a Saturday was mostly crushed avocado or potted meat sandwiches, with perhaps pounded calves’ liver fried with lots of onions and creole bread for six o’clock tea. But the intense activity, and the smells of what was to come on Sunday noon, assuaged the need for bigger meals. In the houses of even the poorest, at the very least red kidney beans and bits of salty pigtails stewed on outdoor fire hearths waiting for the addition of raw rice, assiduously picked over for stones, and washed several times until the water ran clear. And in the houses of those that could better afford it, chickens, pork, or beef roasted in ovens; great pots of grey-black relleno soup thickened on stoves with a dozen hard-boild eggs per pot bobbing up and down like dumplings, and the corn mills of the town ground busily in preparation for the mounds of tortillas that would be needed the following day. Seafood and groundfood were rarely cooked on Sundays: fish, crayfish, conch, yams, cocoa, sweet potatoes, breadfruit and the like were everyday fare.
In fact I think it’s a quirk of a certain kind of post-colonial novel to almost overdo the local colour. The book is absolutely full of references to foodstuffs, flowers and trees, bits of local tradition, references to history; it’s like one long assertion of Belizeyness. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing; in fact I enjoy all that stuff (particularly the food!). It’s just an observation of a phase that, perhaps, national literatures tend to go through.
I did enjoy this book, btw, so I hope my comments don’t across as negative. I enjoyed all the descriptive stuff, found the story engaging, and learn at least slightly more about Belize than I knew before. So that’s all good.
ipike's review
3.0
An evocative coming of age story set in Belize. I liked the descriptions of the houses, the vegetation, the ocean, the food, the Catholic girls school, and the family relationships. Interesting on class, gender, race dynamics at the time too. It is quite slow-moving but once I settled into its rhythm, I enjoyed it.
abbie_'s review
3.0
This time I was off to Belize with Beka Lamb by Zee Edgell!
.
It’s a fairly simple story about a young girl, Beka Lamb funnily enough, growing up in Belize under British colonialism who is quite fond of twisting the truth. The book sets Belize in the context of its struggle for independence alongside racial and social issues, but for me the most compelling aspect was the friendship between Beka and Toycie. They’re in the same year at school despite their 3 year age difference, but Toycie’s chance at an education is cruelly snatched away when she’s expelled due to the covent school’s disapproval of her pregnancy. The subsequent treatment of Toycie in society was also wonderfully written but upsetting, highlighting the double standards between men and women.
.
I thought Edgell did a fantastic job with some of the characters, such as Beka’s grandmother, who is a fierce supporter of the People’s Independence Party, and Miss Eila, Toycie’s aunt who struggles against poverty to give Toycie the best care she can. However, not all the characters felt as fleshed out, and even Beka felt a bit 2D at times which was disappointing.
.
I’m not actually sure whether this book is targeted at a younger audience or not, but I thought it felt that way - it would make an excellent GCSE text I feel, as you really get a feel for the melting pot that is Belize society and the social interactions and prejudices that play a part there, not to mention gender roles and the role of the church.
.
Overall, an informative and interesting read if a little dry at times, but as one of the first books by a Belizean author to be recognised internationally, an important one.
.
It’s a fairly simple story about a young girl, Beka Lamb funnily enough, growing up in Belize under British colonialism who is quite fond of twisting the truth. The book sets Belize in the context of its struggle for independence alongside racial and social issues, but for me the most compelling aspect was the friendship between Beka and Toycie. They’re in the same year at school despite their 3 year age difference, but Toycie’s chance at an education is cruelly snatched away when she’s expelled due to the covent school’s disapproval of her pregnancy. The subsequent treatment of Toycie in society was also wonderfully written but upsetting, highlighting the double standards between men and women.
.
I thought Edgell did a fantastic job with some of the characters, such as Beka’s grandmother, who is a fierce supporter of the People’s Independence Party, and Miss Eila, Toycie’s aunt who struggles against poverty to give Toycie the best care she can. However, not all the characters felt as fleshed out, and even Beka felt a bit 2D at times which was disappointing.
.
I’m not actually sure whether this book is targeted at a younger audience or not, but I thought it felt that way - it would make an excellent GCSE text I feel, as you really get a feel for the melting pot that is Belize society and the social interactions and prejudices that play a part there, not to mention gender roles and the role of the church.
.
Overall, an informative and interesting read if a little dry at times, but as one of the first books by a Belizean author to be recognised internationally, an important one.
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