Last Friday, I bought "The Other Hand" by Chris Cleave (this book is known as "Little Bee" in the States) and was so engrossed with it that I finished it by Saturday afternoon. I couldn't put it down because I just had to find out how it ended. Now, just over a week later, I am still thinking about the book and have decided to write down my thoughts.
I can't really say all I want to say about the book without discussing the basic plot and the ending. So, if you want to read this book, which I do recommend, don't read past the break. So much of the fun of the book is discovering the plot as it unfolds through numerous twists and turns. If you've already read it, then continue on reading.
ALERT: SPOILERS BELOW * * * ALERT: SPOILERS BELOW * * * ALERT: SPOILERS BELOW
The basic plot of the story unfolds from the perspective of two women, Little Bee and Sarah. Little Bee is a 16-year-old refugee from Nigeria. Sarah is a magazine editor who lives in Surrey with her son Charlie. Sarah's husband, Andrew, has committed suicide by hanging himself one morning while Sarah was at work and Charlie was at nursery. Charlie is a 4-year-old who will only wear a Batman costume and answer to "Batman." Charlie is my favorite character in the book.
We learn over the course of the book that Sarah and Andrew met Little Bee on a beach in Nigeria 2 years before the events taking place. Sarah and Andrew went to Nigeria for a vacation to try to save their marriage after Andrew learned that Sarah was having an affair with Lawrence. They chose Nigeria, because as an editor of a magazine, Sarah receives all kinds of free stuff, one of which was a trip to a Nigerian beach resort. They wander off the resort's guarded beach one afternoon and find two girls, Little Bee and her sister, Nkiruka. They girls ask Sarah and Andrew to take them back to the resort because men were hunting them with dogs. A guard from the hotel tries to get Sarah and Andrew to head back to the resort without the girls. The men with the dogs arrive at the beach and an encounter occurs that changes forever the lives of everyone involved. The resort guard is killed in a skirmish with the men. The men say they will let the girls survive if Andrew cuts off one of his fingers. Andrew can't do it, but Sarah takes the machete and chops off her own finger to save the lives of the girls. Sarah and Andrew run back to the resort after she chops off her finger. However, since Sarah was the only one to chop off her finger, the men decide that only one girl should live - Little Bee. They rape and torture Nkiruka for hours before they finally kill her, as Little Bee sat hidden under a washed-up boat. After listening to the horrific end to her sister's life, Little Bee takes off and makes her way to a shipyard. She stows away on a boat headed for England, taking with her Andrew's wallet that he had dropped on the beach.
She is discovered on the boat, so immigration picks her up when the boats arrives in England. She is placed in an immigration detention facility where she waits for 2 years to be released. Little Bee describes in detail the detention facility. It is basically a jail where people are held indefinitely while they await the outcome of their asylum cases. Little Bee learns proper English while she is in jail by reading newspapers and magazines. Speaking and reading correct English is very important to her, because she thinks it will help her be able to stay in England. Little Bee and three other girls are released from the detention center without the proper paperwork, because one of the girls had made a deal with a guard. In exchange for sex, he would let her out, along with some other girls. So, Little Bee is free from the detention center, but is an illegal immigrant. She uses the information in Andrew's wallet to call him and let him know she is coming to see him.
Andrew and Sarah had assumed that both Little Bee and her sister died that day on the beach. Andrew, already depressed before the fateful trip to Nigeria, could not get over his guilt of not being able to save them and had become severely depressed. So, when Little Bee calls him, he thinks he has lost touch with reality. When she shows up at their house 2 days later, he freaks out and hangs himself. Little Bee, still outraged that his cowardice caused the death of her sister, watches as he kills himself and does nothing to save him.
Little Bee shows up at Sarah's doorstep on the day that they are going to bury Andrew. Sarah did not know that Little Bee had already been there or that her husband knew she was there. Sarah welcomes Little Bee into her home and decides to help her get her immigration status in order.
Shortly after Sarah buries Andrew (like maybe the day after), Lawrence invites himself to stay at Sarah's house for a few days. Lawrence and Little Bee do not get along. He is excited to have Sarah to himself and does not want anyone taking her attention away from him. He gets angry at Sarah for missing Andrew. In all, Lawrence is an unbelievable jerk. He is my least favorite character in the book, with absolutely nothing redeeming about him.
Lawrence, Sarah, Batman, and Little Bee are at the park one day when Batman hides and no one can find him. After frantically searching for Batman, they send Little Bee off to get the police to help. The police realize Little Bee is acting suspicious, so they do a background check on her and find out she is an illegal immigrant. She is taken into custody to be shipped back to Nigeria. In the meantime, Batman comes out of his hiding spot, so her capture was all for naught.
Up until this point, I am in love with this book. The twists and turns and excellent writing made me unable to stop reading the book. But now, we enter the part that pisses me off. Sarah and Batman end up on the same plane as Little Bee, because Lawrence pulled some strings to find out the flight info for Little Bee's trip back to Nigeria. I understand the connection Sarah felt to Little Bee and her desire to go to Nigeria to help her. Little Bee had said along that if she were sent back to Nigeria, she would be killed. But come on, what mother in her right mind would take her 4-year-old son with her to a place where she had witnessed and knew about such danger and brutality? Sarah has the belief that the Nigerians wouldn't do anything to Little Bee with Sarah and Batman at her side. So, she was willing to use Batman as a sort of shield for Little Bee? Really? I just can't imagine choosing to put my child in danger over someone else, no matter the connection I may feel towards that person.
Before they left for Nigeria to save Little Bee, Sarah had found research that Andrew had been doing on Nigeria and the violence that had occurred there. Sarah decides to quit her magazine job to write the book about Little Bee and Nigeria. While Sarah, Batman, and Little Bee are in Nigeria, they are kept guarded in a hotel. They bribe the guards to allow them to leave during the day, so they can gather collaborating stories from other Nigerians about the violence that had taken place there. They go for a longer excursion one day, so that Little Bee can go back to the beach where her sister is killed and say good-bye to her. The Nigerians catch up with them there. Batman almost gets shot by the Nigerians in the process of them tracking Little Bee down. Yet again, I am furious that Sarah would be so careless with her son's life. The book ends with the Nigerians capturing Little Bee. We do not know what happens from there.
There were so many things I liked about this book. It was exciting. I couldn't wait for the pieces to be put together so that I could know what was happening. This sounds weird, but I liked that Andrew was depressed before they went to Nigeria and that Sarah had been cheating on him before then. I think that if Sarah had started the affair with Lawrence after Nigeria, I would have felt like she was wrong in some way, like Andrew's inability to chop off his own finger to save the girls was a reason for her infidelity. Maybe that's because I can't say for sure that I would chop off my own finger to save some random girls on a beach. (Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn't. Here's hoping I never have to find out.) For the same reason, I am glad Andrew was depressed before Nigeria. If this event took a really happy guy, with a happy marriage, and ruined it all, that would just bum me out. But, they had a crappy marriage and he was already depressed, so the event on the beach just made things worse, but didn't take something good and make it bad. I don't know why that was so important to me while reading this book, but it was.
I loved Batman. The author did a fantastic job of capturing the personality of this little guy. He spoke like a 4-year-old, and I can still hear his little voice in my head. I may forever refer to bad people as "baddies" and mentally replace "my" with "mine," as in "mine cat" instead of "my cat." The fact that Charlie would only wear his Batman costume or answer to "Batman" showed that this little guy picked up on the demons that his father was fighting. He needed super hero powers to fight off the baddies and to feel safe.
I always like books that open my eyes to cultures or things that I do not know about. Reading about Nigeria and about the detention facility was fascinating to me. Immigration is one of those things that can be so black and white in the abstract, but hearing personal stories makes it much more gray. It's easy to think of illegal immigrants as people who are breaking the law and who should be shipped back to wherever they came from. Of course, my recognition of the gray area related to immigration occurred years ago when I met Cesar and visited El Salvador for the first time. But, it's always good to have it reinforced from another perspective - this time from Africa instead of Latin America. After reading this book, the part of me that seeks to make the world a better place would love to do something to help those stuck in detention facilities for years and years.
There were a few things I didn't like about this book. I hated Lawrence. I hated that he invited himself over to Sarah's to stay with her and Batman so soon after Andrew died. I hated that he expected Sarah not to mourn her husband, like he thought she would be celebrating his death or something. Yes, they had a bad marriage, and, yes, she was cheating on him. But, he was her husband. They had been together for years and had a son together. Of course she was going to mourn his loss. Of course she was going to miss him. For better or worse, he was an integral part of her life. To expect otherwise is selfish and ignorant.
As I mentioned above, I didn't like the last part of the book. The whole thing with Sarah and Batman going to Nigeria was just stupid. But, most of all, I hated the very end of the book. To go on the journey of the book only to be left hanging on the ending made me mad, livid, actually. I felt robbed. Did Little Bee get killed? Or was she put in jail? Did Sarah write the book exposing all of the violence in Nigeria? Did Sarah and Batman even get out of Nigeria alive? It seemed to me as if the author got tired of writing and simply stopped writing. There was so much more story to be told.
Despite my displeasure with the end of the book, I did enjoy reading it. I read this for my book club, but won't be able to make it that week, which is too bad, since I'd love to hear what others think of it as well.
