This audio book gets 4 stars for keeping my interest throughout, especially the grisly scenes. Some of the events did drag a little, and some of the philosophizing, but overall the action kept moving and stayed interesting. I was especially impressed with the reader, Anne Flosnik who, it turns out, is an "accent specialist." Her Nigerian accent was so believable (at least, for my naive, untrained ear) that I looked up this impressive reader, at: http://www.anneflosnik.com. ( )

Amazing, really. It is a harsh and realistic look at what we can easily turn a blind eye to. Human cruelty. It is something that is hard to look in the eye. We tend to turn away and keep walking. And yet, it is filled with such hope and love.

My favorite passage (one that just really hit home with me as VERY VERY true):
"Isn't it sad, growing up? You start off like my Charlie. You start off thinking you can kill all the baddies and save the world. Then you get a big older, maybe Little Bee's age, and you realize that some of the world's badness is inside you, that maybe you're part of it. And then you get a little bit older still, and you start wondering whether that badness you've seen in yourself is really all that bad. You start talking about ten percent." ( )

Once I got beyond the gimmicky marketing on the jacket of this book, I felt it to be a worthwhile read. I found the writing truly maddening at times, but the story was so compelling and moving in parts that I couldn't put the book down. I'm going to recommend it to my book group, because I can see that it could make for a truly interesting discussion. ( )

***SPOILERS HIDDEN***

What do a sixteen-year-old Nigerian refugee and a 32-year-old middle-class British mother have in common? Little Bee is an examination of deep loss, focusing most intensely on how these two characters are broken in different ways as the result of a single terrifying incident. The story is narrated in these dual voices, the distinction between them helped along very nicely by author Chris Cleave’s careful attention to Nigerian idioms when Little Bee is telling the story. Unfortunately, however, as deep and affecting as Little Bee sounds, this is a story that only skims the surface of a premise that demands more.

From Little Bee I expected a powerful, moving story of triumph against great odds. It certainly gets off to a promising start, with Little Bee describing life in her village, “before the men came,” before interethnic and oil-related conflicts led to unspeakable violence. For a topic as heavy as this, though, more of Little Bee’s back story in Nigeria, along with deeper development of her character, is essential. I saw great potential for more vivid description of Little Bee’s village life, both before and after “the men came,” and was terribly disappointed that Cleave didn’t elaborate. The story loses its footing when focus shifts to Sarah, who seems childlike for a 32-year-old. No doubt Cleave was trying to convey Sarah’s vulnerability after the suicide of her husband on top of the horror she endured while vacationing in Nigeria, but her childlike manner grates at times. Little Bee is arguably the more compelling of the two, and the book is most engaging when the spotlight is on her. The alternating points-of-view do work, but by affording Sarah equal time as narrator, Cleave turned what could have been a truly great, moving work into just a good work.

Teenage Little Bee--whom characters repeatedly refer to as a “woman,” much to my puzzlement--not Sarah, seems the stronger of the two characters. I’m not convinced this isn’t a flaw.

For someone who from an early age learned that men are to be feared, Little Bee is shockingly confident when speaking with them. A scene in which she lobs this barb at Lawrence struck me as especially unrealistic: “What kind of help are you, Lawrence? Maybe you are the kind of help that only arrives when it wants sexual intercourse.” Here's a girl who had no choice but to listen as her sister was horrifically raped and murdered. This is someone who was too frozen with fear to leave the jungle to seek help at a time when she so desperately needed it, yet she’s brazen enough to look Lawrence, a man who easily could have her deported, in the eye and verbally spar with him without missing a beat. It doesn’t ring true. Cleave was intending to show Little Bee’s strength of character here, but Little Bee had experienced deep and very possibly, permanent, psychological trauma at the hands of men.

Where Little Bee is a stand-out is in its soberingly powerful scenes, the most memorable of which comes at the book’s halfway point and is the impetus for every subsequent interaction between Little Bee and Sarah. There's genuine fear and sorrow in this book and more than a few moral dilemmas that lend the story a sophisticated gravity.

On the flip side, Sarah’s glamorous job at a women’s magazine--complete with an assistant who's nothing more than a ridiculous caricature--and an awkward story line involving an extramarital affair, don’t do Little Bee any favors; annoyingly, here the story’s tone seems to veer into beach-read territory. Such soap–opera-ish details seem somehow disrespectful to the book’s important theme.

Lastly, Cleave’s accomplished writing and some unique description make for memorable images. Fortunately, these help offset loads of missing basic punctuation. Cleave knows how to paint with words, but this book desperately needed an additional round of editing before its final printing.

Final verdict: Read but don’t expect greatness. ( )

just loved it... ( )