Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Little Bee: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Little Bee: A Novel
    Unavailable
    Little Bee: A Novel
    Ebook423 pages6 hours

    Little Bee: A Novel

    By Chris Cleave

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    Listen to the audiobook instead

    About this ebook

    The lives of a sixteen-year-old Nigerian orphan and a well-off British woman collide in this page-turning #1 New York Times bestseller and book club favorite from Chris Cleave.

    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. Once you have read it, you’ll want to tell everyone about it. When you do, please don’t tell them what happens either. The magic is in how it unfolds.

    Editor's Note

    Worlds Collide...

    The lovely and emotional story of a British woman and a teenage refugee reunited years after a horrific event on a Nigerian beach changed their lives forever.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster
    Release dateFeb 10, 2009
    ISBN9781416593836
    Author

    Chris Cleave

    Chris Cleave is the author of Everyone Brave is Forgiven, Gold, Incendiary, and the #1 New York Times bestseller Little Bee. He lives with his wife and three children in London, England. Visit him at ChrisCleave.com or on Twitter @ChrisCleave.

    Related to Little Bee

    Related ebooks

    Coming of Age Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      New Titles

      Oct 9, 2019

      By George Keithley George Braziller, Inc. “The Donner Party is one of the three or four finest book-length American poems ever written.”—Poetry. “Out of the western migration of the 1840s…Keithley has made a lean, taut narra-tive poem that moves with

      4 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Jianan Qian

      Dec 8, 2018

      My 2018 experience, perhaps like everyone else, is much swamped with all sorts of political news that keeps me in dread and panic. As a result, my reading life is divided into three categories: (1.) I consult history-related books to try to understan

      2 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Il’ja Rakos

      Dec 8, 2018

      These things come in threes and today they came nearly all at once. The first, when the President of Ukraine–famous for his chocolate–announced that he was putting the half of the country that borders Russia under martial law. The second with the two

      5 min read

    • Article

      September Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month)

      Sep 4, 2019

      September is for back-to-school, the big Vogue issue, and blockbuster books. This month brings new Margaret Atwood, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Ann Patchett. The post September Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month) appeared first on The Milli

      6 min read

    • Article

      March Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month)

      Mar 4, 2020

      March brings us new books from Louise Erdrich, Lily King, and Rebecca Solnit—and the FINAL volume in Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall Trilogy. The post March Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month) appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    • Article

      August Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month)

      Aug 5, 2019

      14 brand-new beach reads, including a powerful debut about faith in today’s America. (We take all kinds of books with us to the beach, okay?) The post August Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month) appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      June Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month)

      Jun 1, 2020

      For June, we take a look at new books from Brit Bennett, Megha Majumdar, Emily Temple, Joe Meno, and Alexandra Petri—just to name a few. The post June Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month) appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      February Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month)

      Jan 30, 2023

      We wouldn’t dream of abandoning our vast biannual Most Anticipated Book Previews, but we thought a monthly reminder would be helpful (and give us a chance to note titles we missed the first time around). Here’s what we’re looking out for in February:

      5 min read

    • Article

      Most Anticipated: The Great 2023A Book Preview

      Jan 9, 2023

      Welcome to our biannual Great Book Preview! We’ve assembled the best books of 2023A (that is, the first half of 2023), including new work from Nicole Chung, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Claire Dederer, Brian Dillon, Samantha Irby, Heidi Julavits, Catherine La

      29 min read

    • Article

      February Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month)

      Feb 2, 2022

      February brings new work from Olga Tokarczuk, Jennifer Haigh, and Marlon James, and moving debuts from Kiare Ladner, Maayan Eitan, and Neda Toloui-Semnani. The post February Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month) appeared first on The Mi

      10 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Aug 8, 2022

      Books
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Books Briefing: What to Read This Summer

      May 28, 2021

      Works that evoke feelings of wonder about the universe, offer smart observations about life, and more: Your weekly guide to the best in books

      6 min read

    • Article

      The 10 Best Books Of 2019

      Dec 4, 2019

      The 10 Best Books Of 2019
      6 min read

    • Article

      5 Books Making News This Week: Antiheroines & Alternative La La Land

      Mar 14, 2017

      Rick Bass’s For a Little While wins this year’s $20,000 Story Prize. The Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist includes Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed, Mary Gaitskill’s The Mare, Eimear McBride’s The Lesser Bohemians, C.E. Morgan’s The Sport of King

      6 min read

    • Article

      December Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month)

      Dec 1, 2021

      December brings new collections by Neel Patel, Christopher Harding, Clara Blue Adams, plus Juhea Kim's fictional debut and Tabitha Lasley's first memoir. The post December Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month) appeared first on The Mill

      4 min read

    • Article

      Current Affairs

      Sep 21, 2022

      Wm Collins, 308pp, £20 Before Covid struck, the Prince Rupert hotel in Shrewsbury was a sumptuous, timber-framed four-star hostelry, 900 years old. But then it was forced to close and its management responded to the government’s ‘everyone in’ initiat

      6 min read

    Reviews for Little Bee

    4/5

    2,998 ratings355 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Impossible to put down, this story of love, betrayal, hope, and family will leave readers wiping their eyes and wishing for more. Two women on opposite sides of the world find their lives entangled by one horrific moment in time that neither of them will ever be able to forget. Little Bee, a Nigerian asylum seeker and Sarah an editor in London will find their paths crossing nearly two years after their first horrible encounter and both will be powerless to stop the chain of events that will unfold. Uplifting, captivating, and unique; the characters leap right off the pages and into your heart and you're powerless to turn away. A real triumph in storytelling.
    • 3/5
      I clearly have a different definition of "human triumph" than whomever wrote the review that's quoted on the book cover.
    • 5/5
      Little Bee is beautiful, awful, hopeful, devastating, and utterly unforgettable. Cleave juxtaposes gorgeous, almost poetic prose with a truly horrific story that is made bearable by moments of great humor and warmth, many of which are provided by Sarah’s son Charlie, a four-year-old who is convinced he is Batman.Read Little Bee for the language and the variety of voices that are so incredible you’ll want to wrap yourself up with them and stay for days. Read it for Cleave’s ability to tell a story that is framed by politics but that is ultimately about people. Read it because it does all the things fiction is supposed to do and then some. From the striking cover to the very last word, Little Bee is intense, satisfying, and not to be missed. This is a story you will carry with you for the rest of your reading days.Read my full review at The Book Lady's Blog.
    • 4/5
      This dually narrated story is based on the lives of two females, one being a 16-year-old and another being a married woman with a 4-year-old son who believes he's Batman. These two women have nothing in common until one day they meet on a beach. Their lives are forever intertwined.The greatest strength in this book was its ability to keep me turning the pages. I love when a book does that. Cleave did a great job in revealing the plot with interesting characters. However, there were several pieces to the book that I didn't feel fit the situation, and I didn't find a major distinction in the narrators. On a couple of occasions, I had to remind myself or figure out who was speaking. You would think the age difference alone would place a large enough gap in the language. Regardless, it was a compelling read and one that I'm glad I finally got to.Originally posted on: Thoughts of Joy
    • 5/5
      I listened to this on audio. I think I would have liked it as well in book form, but the reader did a wonderful job of speaking in Little Bee's Nigerian accent which added something to the whole experience. It was a lyrically written account of a young Nigerian woman who flees to England in hopes of being granted refugee status after her sister was murdered by soldiers. By chance an English couple vacationing in Nigeria were caught up in the encounter with the soldiers, and were able to save Little Bee, but not without incident. When she arrives in England, Little Bee finds the couple -- the only people she knows in the country. I won't say more about the plot, but will say that it is wonderful to see England through Little Bee's eyes. She often muses on how she would explain certain rather mundane things to her girlfriends back home and in doing so she sheds light on the vast differences between the cultures. The charachters are all well written, including a little boy who beleives he is Batman (costume and all). It is a book that contrasts the touching softness and brutal harshness of the world. Highly recommended
    • 3/5
      Imagine the culture shock of coming from a small village in Nigeria, swept up in conflict, to find yourself detained in a UK Immigration Detention centre. You desperately want to belong to this country, learning the culture and language, but its a struggle. "The System" and "The Conflict" as seen through the eyes of one girl, show the harsness of being just one Little Bee in a big big world.
    • 5/5
      I think we should keep abreast of the horror that goes on in this world and never forget those who are suffering.
    • 3/5
      Blurb............

      Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and Costa Novel of the Year, this international bestseller has become a reading group classic.

      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:

      This is the story of two women.
      Their lives collide one fateful day, and one of them has to make a terrible choice.
      Two years later, they meet again - the story starts there...

      Once you have read it, you'll want to tell your friends about it. When you do, please don't tell them what happens either. The magic is in how it unfolds.

      The book sets out to be deliberately opaque and mysterious...........ooh read this, don't tell anyone what happens it's so special, tell others about it but don't spoil it for them, etc etc etc.

      A fantastic, thought-provoking read that stays with you for weeks and months afterwards, invading your thoughts at unexpected moments?

      Or an extremely clever marketing ploy?

      Being a grumpy, miserable cynic and having read the book - I choose marketing ploy.

      Well then what to write...........A meets B and C, who are married to each other, at location X. D who is A's sister is present at the meeting, which is soon joined by E and another group we'll call the F's. A disagreement occurs. Fast forward a while, A contacts C, now in location Y. This upsets C greatly, and has a calamitous effect on him, B and her close friend G and her child H. The rest of the book introduces other minor characters that I shall refer to as I, J, K and L. (I might have missed out an M and a N, but none of these are major players, so don't worry too much.) The climax of the book involves A, B and H, along with some O's at location X.

      Had the blurb presented the book in a more traditional fashion, I'm no marketing guru, but I would guess a fraction of the copies actually sold would have been. One of the characters in the book, G actually espouses the same opinion. The topic under debate, doesn't typically interest people, until such time as the right wing tabloids want to beat the drum and whip up some populist fury.
      I would probably have passed it over.

      That said, it was enjoyable enough, but perhaps I needed to be wearing my magician's cloak to feel the magic.Well, I wasn't.

      3 from 5, must dash or I'll be late for Quidditch practise.

      I do have another Cleave book on my shelf, Incendiary, as yet unread. I'm unsure what ploy enticed me to buy the book, but I'll need to check the blurb on the back to refresh my memory. I'm also unsure if my purchase of Incendiary predates my purchase of The Other Hand, not that it matters too much.

      Seduced by the marketing fiends, I bought this new a few years ago.
    • 3/5
      Two and a half stars, really, but rounding up because the audiobook narrator did a wonderful job.

      I really liked large chunks of this book, and most of this was cultural observations from the titular character. But the rest felt so blandly contrived that I had to focus to not swerve off the road. (ESPECIALLY near the end.)

      The "don't tell anyone the plot" gimmick printed on the dust jacket is hilarious, too; the plot feels like a reverse engineered take on the Kite Runner, with a few alterations in able to get emotional reactions and pad length. This last part is especially annoying, since I felt like the story should've naturally run its course chapters before the book ends. But wait, here's *another* twist to get the reader to say "wow!" More like, "really?"

      But still, the good parts are quite good, and for those alone I think this was worth plodding through.
    • 2/5
      Everyone Brave is Forgiven is one of my favorite novels, but this one just isnt for me.
    • 4/5
      It's 3.5 stars for me.

      I like Chris Cleave's voice and he has clearly done his research on refugee situations.
      I believe the story shows more than anything the torment and strangeness of displacement in both place, culture and everyday physical barriers. If you set aside the characters that seem to be more of an attempt to build something around what the author wishes to say, it's a good insight into what really happens out there. And I think Chris Cleave being a journalist shows his insight into the field.
      This is what the story is about. For me.
      Then again I am also a journalist and a photographer as well so I read putting together dots of facts with fiction. This is also how I write in some ways.

      The characters are somewhat thin I find, almost made up and detracts from the story. I can't tell why CC has chosen this way to depict them however it almost feels deliberate and if so, well perhaps to emphasize the absurdity of the life a refugee or a migrant lives, never really being fully accepted, no matter how well they do, how hard they try, how much they assimilate. And I say that having been a migrant three times over in my own life.

      Chris Cleave is not a migrant but his heart is with the people that leave their home. He has written it in the first person because he wants the reader to hear their story. This is the most important part of this story for me.
    • 4/5
      What the novel lacked in credibility it made up for in interest and teaching. I thought it a very worthwhile way to present the issues and tragedies faced by many immigrants.
    • 5/5
      One of the best stories I have read in along time.
    • 4/5
      This was a powerful story. The characters were perfectly flawed allowing me to connect with them. The only issue I had with this novel was the ending; I was hoping for more. Overall one of the most touching novels I've read in a while.
    • 4/5
      The characters in the story decide when to put themselves first and when to offer charity. Is one human life ever more valuable than another? What if one of the lives in question is your own? Can we believe that even in the face of unspeakable inhumanity, humanity
      can prevail?


      "Wouldn't that be funny, if the oil rebels were playing U2 in their jungle camps, and the government soldiers were playing U2 in their trucks. I think everyone was killing everyone else and listening to the same music... That is a good trick about this world, Sarah. No one likes each other, but everyone likes U2."
    • 5/5
      Wow. I must own this book, I urge all to read it - you will reconsider how you look at your life....
    • 4/5
      READ THIS BOOK!
    • 5/5
      Powerful, gut wrenching and terribly, terribly sad. An emotionally charged novel of ethical choices. Little Bee narrates her African cultural collision with a British modern world. Sarah narrates her struggle and her husband' a struggle with their consciences to help Little Bee in a confrontation on a Nigerian beach DNS later in Britain when Little Bee shows up as a refugee. This novel pulls no punches. It holds nothing back and I will not forget it easily.
    • 1/5
      First off, the hype on the back of this book is totally misleading. That pretty much knocked off a whole star for me here. You can't praise your own book to that extent and then have a slightly above mediocre book.
      That aside, I quite enjoyed this book. Mind you, it was certainly not an easy read but I'm glad I read it.
    • 4/5
      Nigerian refugee fleeing from horror
    • 5/5
      This is one of the best books I've read in quite a while. We first meet Little Bee in a refugee detention center in England. The excellent writing lets us inside her constant struggle of fear, wishing to die yet determined to live. Her life has crossed paths with an English couple, influential, affluent journalists. They have their own problems. The juxtaposition of the problems of an African immigrant with those of an upper middle class family is well crafted. Cleave doesn't beat you over the head with the politics but illuminates it by telling the story of individuals whose lives are destroyed by the violence in Africa and the guilt of the exploiters.
    • 4/5
      An event on a Nigerian beach has inextricably linked Little Bee with Sarah and Andrew O'Rourke, an English couple. The story opens with the asylum seeker, Little Bee, being mistakenly released without papers after being incarcerated in an English detention centre for two years. She sets out in search of the couple she met on the beach. Alternating between Little Bee's account and Sarah's the whole story unfolds. While written with compassion, Cleave has injected it with a mildly melodramatic quality that reveals his fervour. However, without judgement of either side, he illustrates powerfully what a refugee might be running from, what they suffer in the attempt, and the potential consequences. Cleave's portrayal of Little Bee is excellent. She retains her Nigerian way of thinking (always considering how she would explain a particular scene to her friends at home) while simultaneously trying to adapt to English life. She is charming and astute beyond her sixteen years. Cleave's first-hand knowledge of the subject matter was earned during his time studying at Oxford when he worked in a detention centre."Life is precious, whatever its country of origin."
    • 5/5
      Unforgettable
    • 1/5
      I've heard such good things about this book, so I expected to like it a lot more. Now I'm feeling very disappointed, because no matter how I think about it, I just don't like this book at all. It does point out some of the harsh realities of the UK's immigration system - though anyone who stays reasonably informed of the news would already know it - but the rest just fell flat for me.

      I gather that it's supposed to look deeply at the feelings of the two main characters, Little Bee and Sarah, but that's not how it came across to me. Sarah's sense of entitlement - for example, her demand to know everything about Little Bee's life, whether or not Little Bee wants to share with her - runs through the entire book and makes her a very unlikeable character. Little Bee had the potential to be a great character, but her portrayal seemed very shallow.

      (Also, the audiobook narrator annoys me. She speaks so excruciatingly slowly that I lost interest on several occasions. Several times, I set my audiobook program to play the audio at 2x normal speed, and it was still slow. That doesn't add to the enjoyment of the book.)
    • 5/5
      the ending brought tears to my eyes!
    • 4/5
      I think this book is a very powerful story about current issues that are complicated and hard. It comes with a spoiler warning, which means it is difficult to say much more about the plot. I didn't find anything unbelievable or unrealistic, and it will stay with me, despite it being a male author writing about women (who are not all the same). The male characters are not particularly sympathetic.
    • 4/5
      I feel I will be haunted by this tale and it's characters. It feels like an artsy-indie film that stops 3/4 of the way through the narrative, cause, hey that's real man. Not a single knot was tied. Every thread of thought it provoked was left like the thick tassel on a French drapery. I guess now I can choose my own ending.
    • 5/5
      The reader won't soon forget the main character in this book and will race to the end in search of answers. Such a brilliant author! I must now read his first book. It's true that giving too much away would spoil things for a new reader. The young lady in this book and many other things about the story will leave you holding your breath. Events in the book beg for answers and change, as though we don't have enough of those kinds of things in the world today, but this story is personal. Read this book. Beautifully written and very readable.
    • 3/5
      I think this is a brave and well documented novel about a very hard problem: the African refugees coming to Europe. On the other hand, in my opinion the main character of the novel: "Little Bee" is sometimes not completely believable.
    • 2/5
      Based on all the hype I thought I would really like this book, but I didn't. The characters just did not resonate with me and the story wasn't as intriguing as it could have been. Overall a hohum book for me.