Little Bee—Chris Cleave (2009 Fiction)

This is a tale of two women, English and Nigerian, whose paths converge with tragic results. Little Bee is a Nigerian teenager who flees the lethal consequences of having observed a massacre of her village by oil company employees. Stowing her way to England, her key to a new life is a British driving license. The license belongs to the Englishwoman’s husband, Andrew O’Rourke, and provides an accurate address and telephone number. How Little Bee obtained the license on a Port Harcourt beach is Cleave’s master plot device. Little Bee reaches England and is detained in a government refugee center for two years. Cleave captures the utter and inexcusable helplessness of detainees. Their only avenues of escape are sex or acceptable language skills. Little Bee survives suicidal depression and learns English from the BBC TV. A fellow Jamaican detainee seduces a staff official and Little Bee is improperly released, without any documentation. She succeeds in reaching the driving license address. Andrew is a journalist. He is married to Sarah, a magazine editor. They have a son Charlie who lives in a Batman world of goodies and baddies. Sarah is having an affair with Lawrence, who works for the Home Office. Little Bee’s arrival into the O’Rourke family triggers a fast-moving sequence of plausible events, an enthralling narrative which returns the reader to Port Harcourt. Cleave has created a convincing cast for a harrowing story which will resonate with the reader when finished.

Reviewed by Martin Waldron