Pages: 266
Finished: August 30
Like all bookclub books, I wait to review the book until after we meet. While this keeps my fellow bookclub members from being subjected to my opinions too many times, the downside is that I don't always remember everything that I want to talk about. As I was reading this book, I often found myself thinking of a friend of mine who was living in Rwanda during the violence there. I was shocked by my reaction to the emotion and violence in the book, simply because you would think that by now, with all the books that I have read on the subject, that I would be less surprised by the reality of life in some parts of the world.
I was very impressed with Chris Cleave's skill in writing a female voice. Often when a male author attempts to write in a female voice it comes off strange, or awkward. That was not the case here. Although he is writing as two very different women drawn together by a mutual experience, neither character seems forced or unrealistic. I enjoyed the narrative style of Little Bee, the titular character, for a number of reasons that I have a tough time articulating. Let me just give you an example:
One of the things I would have to explain to the girls from back home, if I was telling them this story, is the simple little word horror. It means something different to the people from my village.
In your country, if you are not scared enough already, you can go to watch a horror film. Afterward you can go out of the cinema into the night and for a little while there is horror in everything. Perhaps there are murderers lying in wait for you at home. You think this because there is a light on in your house that you are certain you did not leave on. And when you remove your makeup in the mirror last thing, you see a strange look in your own eyes. It is not you. For one hour you are haunted, and you do not trust anybody, and then the feeling fades away. Horror in your country is something you take a dose of to remind yourself that you are not suffering from it.
For me and the girls from my village, horror is a disease and we are sick with it. It is not an illness you can cure yourself of by standing up and letting the big red cinema seat fold itself up behind you. That would be a good trick.
This is why I love Little Bee, both the book and the character, because there are paragraphs like this one. Little Bee is a survivor, and there is something in the earnestness of her words that makes me want to take care of her.
I really don't want to talk too much about this book, and what happens in it, because I wouldn't want anyone to be spoiled, even though I've never really cared too much about that sort of thing. One thing I will say, I hope that, if push comes to shove, I am more like Sarah than Andrew. I want to think that I am that sort of person, that I wouldn't rationalize the choices that I make. I worry that I would though.
I leave you with a quote. "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" (9).
Good Reading,
Caitlin
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