Little Bee by Chris Cleave is a gem of a book that builds in complexity as you delve deeper into the story. At the start we are introduced to "Little Bee", a 16 year old refugee from Nigeria who is at an immigration detention centre in Southern England, being released into the United Kingdom along with three other female immigrants one sunny May morning. It is only as the plot unfolds that we discover the story actually commenced two years previously on a beach in Nigeria Where the lives of a British couple on holiday, Sarah and Andrew, are irrevocably changed.

Chris Cleave slowly draws the reader into the lives of "Little Bee" and Sarah as they are reunited, in England under circumstances that, may or may not have been beyond their control. The voice of "Little Bee" has a wisdom beyond her mere 16 years and the reader is drawn into the emotional examinations by Sarah and "Little Bee" through alternating first person perspective narrations as they struggle to cope with the events they could never have imagined occurring. Cleave deftly weaves the tale in a manner that that works well in conveying the very personal story he is portraying and inviting the reader to experience.

In all, an excellent novel. ( )

The main premise that brings together the two cultures that form the backdrop to this novel--poor rural Nigeria and rich urban London--is a clever set up that reverberates throughout the rest of the novel. However, I found the reverberations more believable at the beginning of the novel than the end. Still, great job of showing how globalization can now link people from incredibly disparate cultures and backgrounds and how tragic it can be when these linkages take on lives of their own. ( )

After all that hype - unbelievably disappointing. One-dimensional characters, very poorly written. I struggled to finish, and it very nearly ended up in the bin. There are much better books about Nigeria, and this just made me feel cheated and angry. ( )

While I found [Little Bee] to be a powerful and moving story, there was something about the voice that didn't ring quite true to me. Little Bee's voice was alternately sophisticated and childlike. It seemed to me that some of her observations were too sophisticated for her character, or rather that she expressed herself in language beyond her comprehension at times while at other times she struggled with simple vocabulary.
To be fair, the author works at explaining this but I never really felt comfortable with any of the explanations (e.g., spending 4 yrs in refugee jail, practicing English by reading political commentary in the newpaper, stressing that English is Nigeria's official language, adopting an "English" persona, etc.)
Furthermore, the 4-yr-old's constant grammatical "cuteness" (and the mother's constant correction) seemed contrived, as did the whole "Batman" business. I found both contrivances a bit tiresome after a while. Not to say that 4-yr-olds aren't capable of such perversity (I've raised a couple of my own), but the author never quite convinced me of the authenticity of the character. It all felt a bit overused -- although, without giving anything away, the reason for the stress on the whole "Batman" theme is apparent in the end.
Notwithstanding all of the above, the book was original and took us to a place that I don't recall having encountered in any other novel and it is to be recommended on that basis. ( )

This compelling story completely captures the devastating effects on a British couple from the moral decisions made during an ill-planned Nigerian vacation. Switching back and forth between the voices of Sarah -- a competent magazine publisher, mother and troubled wife, and Little Bee – the Nigerian refugee who’s life she has saved, Cleave propels the story forward toward events both horrific and thought-provoking. ( )