RollnSmoke Reviews: LITTLE BEE

Little Bee by Chris Cleave (Simon & Schuster, 2008)

In his second novel Cleave intersects the lives of his two main characters on a beach in Nigeria. First there is Sarah, a posh young mother and magazine editor from London, and then there is Little Bee, a wise, teenage African refugee. From there, the proceeding unlikely story unravels by way of alternating points of view with distinct and plausible idioms. As the author himself explains, “the magic is how the story unfolds.” From the terror and violence of the Nigerian oil fields, to suicide and betrayal, characters are time and again tested against a wide moral compass. While the circumstances are intriguing and often surprising, the plot occasionally dips into melodrama and the ending is a bit tidy (8.5/10).