While on an ill-advised holiday to Nigeria to repair their failing marriage, Andrew Rourke, a journalist, and his wife, Sarah, editor of a fashion magazine, meet Little Bee, a 16-year-old girl, and her older sister, Kindness. The girls are running for their lives from the men who have ransacked their village for oil. Even after suffering an act of unimaginable violence that day, the participants can hardly imagine how their lives will intertwine—and be irrevocably changed. As Andrew spins out of control and Sarah struggles to raise the couple’s child, the appearance of Little Bee, now a refugee who has come to London in search of the Rourkes, her last best hope, forces both women to make difficult choices.

I didn’t know what I was getting into when I read this book.  It was chosen as our April book club read, and the first time I heard of the book was at our March meeting when it was nominated.  This is what I knew about the book that evening in March:

We don’t want to tell you too much about this book!It is a truly special story and we don’t want to spoil it.Nevertheless, you need to know something, so we will just say this:

It is extremely funny, but the African beach scene is horrific.

The story starts there, but the book doesn’t.

And it’s what happens afterward that is most important.

Who wouldn’t want to read that?

Then when I came home from book club and read the synopsis on-line… I was a little skeptical.  The book wasn’t what I had through it would be about from what was described during book club.  I have to admit, I went into this book with an attitude that I was not going to like it.

As little Bee opens,we find little Bee in immigration detention, a place where we has been for two years.  She has learned to protect herself by dressing in loose clothing and wearing heavy boots that are donated to the detention center to avoid the attention of men.  She has also spent this time reading everything she can get her hands on which has given her two years of learning the English language.  As Little Bee is released (sort of) from the center, she has hung all her hope on a name and an address for the O’Rourkes who she had met under horrifying circumstances years earlier in her own country.  These circumstances, are what this book centers around.

Sarah O’Rourke is not my favorite person.  She lacks qualities that I value.  She puts more into her job than into her family…. and she seeks for what she is missing in the arms of another married man.  Her life is spiraling out of control and she acts as if, or perhaps she really doesn’t, know.

Little Bee is a fighter and a survivor and somehow through out this book and the circumstances that drew Bee and Sarah together I felt strongly that this was a book that needed to be read.  While at times is can be described accurately as visually gory, the setting of this book in Nigeria, was an accurate portrayal for me and reminded me of some of the circumstances I have seen and heard about from my time in Honduras.

As I completed this book I had a new respect for what Chris Cleaves had put together.  The first part of the book took me a while to wrap around where I was reading from and I was somewhat lost as to what was happening until I made my way tot he background story of  how all these characters come together.  From that point on, I flew through the book, fully engrossed in the storyline.  While it was not the book I thought I was going to be reading, it was the book I was meant to read.

Bookies Thoughts:

This was our book club read for April and for our group the book over all rated low.  Some of our members found it too horrifying and the language flow of the book to be choppy.

Even in a low rated book, we always seem to find interesting discussion and the line about Scars was one that led us into such discussion:

“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.”

In the book we found that Little Bees scars are what saved her.

We also found not only humor – but sadness as Little Bee had an escape plan, or more so, a way to kill herself wherever she was.  Little Bee was truly a survivor and she had made up her mind that no one would ever take her like her sister was taken.  She would rather die by her own hand.

Book Club Ideas:

We had a potluck and centered our food choices around the Little Bee book.  For those of you who have read the book, you know there is not a lot of food discussion.  I hound in the grocery store graham crackers by Nabisco in the shape of, you got it, little bees.  I made a cream cheese dip to go with it.

Angie in our group made plantains and a Nigeria type cookie made with corn meal.  Kaydi brought a rice dish with beans.

Little Bee and her sister renamed themselves.  While our book club did not do this, I did find on-line that a suggested book club activity for this book would be to rename each of us by characteristics we are known for.

If you would like to know more about Nigeria and some of the issues discussed in this book link here.

My Amazon Review

I purchased my copy of this book from Amazon