Eleanor's Reviews > Little Bee

Chris Cleave's ability to float effortlessly between two distinct ethnic voices (Little Bee, a refugee from Nigeria, and Sarah, a young widow in England) as their stories spin out and around and through one another was nearly mystical.

Years before this book opens, the lives of Sarah and Little Bee violently collided on a beach in Nigeria, and when sheer determination and courage bring them back together again every secret of their hearts is unfolded before our eyes.

I found myself reading and rereading passages, just to fully appreciate the gravity of emotion packed in them. Little Bee's voice, particularly, is by turns wryly funny and wrenching. Nothing escapes her notice, a skill honed by the brutality she witnessed in her native country.

I put this book down after finishing it this morning with the distinct feeling that it will haunt me for a very, very long time.

Brilliant.

"...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.... Sad words are just another beauty. A sad story means, this storyteller is alive."