This book is important today, this minute. With thousands of refugee children pouring over our borders, the signs refusing them shelter outweighing signs welcoming them, we in the US need this story.
I've read the negative comment, that this book is not "real" - I remembered this book in vivid detail for more than two years, so it is "real". And I've read the infamous blurb - which was appalling to me. Only someone deeply incapable of recognizing the inhumanity we daily show to one another could find this book "amusing." The scene on the beach is unforgettably terrible. A young girl is raped and beaten until she - slowly - dies. This is so far beyond "uncomfortable" that it hardly bears repeating. The scenes in the detention center in England made me physically ill. The scenes between Little Bee and Sarah, the English woman who saves her life her on a beach in Nigeria, are hard and hot, and brittle, and give off waves of hope, like smoke. In them, we can see a glimmer of light. That light comes from Little Bee herself, and from Sarah, too, who begins the book with an act of extraordinary courage.
So this book reflects us - we humans - it has both evil of the deepest kind, and uncommon good. We are victim and terrorist, one after the other, all our lives. Not in action, most of us, but in our hearts. All of us. So yes, this book is real.
At the beginning of the book, the scene on the beach in Africa sets the theme and tone of the entire arc of the story, and sends echoes through our lives as well. Two African refugee girls are trapped between the sea and the forest by African "soldiers" - terrorists who have been hunting them. An English couple sees this unfolding, and the leader of the murdering crew tells them that he will spare the lives of the girls if the Englishman will cut off one of his own fingers. Sarah's husband, who thinks too much, cannot, but Sarah grabs a machete and cuts off her finger. In a burst of realism, this act "buys" the life of only one of the girls, a woman's sacrifice being but half of a man's.
Throughout the book, the elements of this theme and this moment play again and again.
The English couple leave Little Bee, whose life is spared, but she has to hear every agony of her sister's dying. This scene should make you sick to your heart. And that sickness will recur every time you think of this book. I read it first more than two years ago, and cannot escape it.
We know that Sarah and Little Bee have not seen the last of each other. And a book of pain and possibility, denial and redemption, unfolds.
At the end of the book, there is a scene on that same beach two years later, which has the same resonance as the first. This time, we do not see or hear the horror. We don't have to. Reality lingers. For me, probably forever.
Today, this country is in the throes of an immigrant crisis - 50,000 children and counting, pouring over our borders from Central America, alone and vulnerable, fleeing terrorists. We have a choice: we can recreate horror. Or we can find a new way - we can sacrifice some of our wealth and isolation and save them. We clearly cannot stop the inhumanity of the terrorists (the child Charlie's "baddies"), wherever and whoever they are. But we can build a new life for some of their young victims.
Many readers, in their comments, seem so blind! I kept getting the idea that for them this very good book was just a book, not a portrait of life. Fortunately for me, reading, if the book is "real," is a living out or a reliving. A book is not just a book, but a slice of life. I accept a good writer's voicing of his characters, and his choice of scenes and details. While I might flinch from time to time at a perceived flaw, even that's acceptable because I am following a trusted voice. This story led me into many paths, past and future. During our own US human cataclysms - slavery, the Civil War, the slaughter of the Native Americans, Jim Crow, Viet Nam - most of the "bosses," different for each situation except that all usually white, blinded themselves to the human truths around them. When we do that we get stuck in the scenario. It doesn't get better; we don't, as they say, go clear. When, as with Laurence in this book, the lives of strangers different from us are in not the scope of our hearts and brains, we are all trapped in inhumanity.
Are we really so afraid of the dark in our own hearts that we cannot light even one small lamp? Come now -
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I really enjoyed this book. The quick snippets of profound humanity mixed in with a harrowing story and mundane every day life is an interesting mix that keeps you going forward. Quick read, enjoyable characters, and at times some very beautiful and deep thoughts. And any reviewers saying “OMG so violent” are sheltered Pollyannas who are looking to clutch their pearls or just complain. This book is in no way graphic. Highly recommend for a quick and entertaining read.
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Amazonian Customer
Chris Cleave does inhabit his characters well
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 4, 2017
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Previously published in UK under title The Other Hand
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Good quality book. Good read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 14, 2018BaildonBelle
On the other hand
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 16, 2010
Collaroy Beach
Nicht schlecht, aber letztendlich enttäuschend
Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on August 18, 2014
