Little Bee by Chris Cleave is an amazing book that I could not put down for the last few days and I don't think the story will leave me for a lot longer.
Little Bee, a young Nigerian refugee, has just been released from the British immigration detention center where she has been held under horrific conditions for the past two years, after narrowly escaping a traumatic fate in her homeland Nigeria. Alone in a foreign country, without a family member, friend or pound to call her own, she seeks out the only English person she knows. Sarah is a posh young mother and magazine editor with whom Little Bee shares a dark and tumultuous past.
The book is written with unpredictable moments of humour and horror - you just want to keep turning the page to see whether the next event will the former or the latter. The characters were great - although I did struggle with the maturity Little Bee displayed for a 16 year old - I suppose though, after what she had endured in her youth, her level of life experiences is more than any of us could comprehend. I really can't say too much about the book without spoiling the unfolding story but I highly recommend this book.
Once again I seem to have selected a book that makes you think about your contribution to the world - sorry to get deep again, but I really like what the author says about human rights at the end of the book:
(I know this quote is long but I couldn't shorten it without losing its impact)
' Evil is not going to be vanquished. Our job is to resist it, and to plant the seeds of further resistance so that goodness never entirely vanishes from the universe. There are degrees of resistance. It starts when you give a dollar to a homeless person and it escalates to the point where people give their lives, as Gandhi did or Martin Luther King, Jr. One person can make a difference by travelling as far along that continuum as they feel able.'
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment