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The Other Hand by Chris Cleave


Janet

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The Other Hand by Chris Cleave

 

This book is published in the USA and Canada as “Little Bee”.

 

The ‘blurb’

We don’t want to tell you what happens in this book. It is a truly special story and we don’t want to spoil it.

 

Nevertheless, you need to know enough to buy it 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.

 

Okay, so the ‘blurb’, such as it is, sounds like a lot of hype, and I imagine it has the opposite to the desired effect and puts some people off buying the book at all. I read the first few pages of it some months back and liked the ‘feel’ of it and I was lucky enough to find it in a charity shop a few weeks ago.

 

I will try not to give too much away in my review but I can’t fully review it without posting some information, so if you’re planning to read this book then I suggest you look no further.

 

 

The novel is about illegal immigrants. I think many people view all asylum seekers as spongers who are just coming to the UK because of our welfare system. Of course, a great number of them are people whose lives are in great danger in their home country and who flee because the alternative is death.

 

This book offers a (possibly middle-class) relatively balanced view of asylum seekers who are in such danger and it is clear that the writer has sympathy with them - or certainly those who are fleeing for genuine reasons.

 

The novel starts in a detention centre in Essex. It’s fictional but is based on real institutions of this nature. Little Bee (as she’s known) has fled Nigeria after ‘the men’ slaughtered the people of her village to drill for the valuable oil reserves in the area. Before her escape to Britain she has an encounter on a beach with a white couple called Sarah and Andrew who have gone to Nigeria to try to save their troubled marriage. This encounter changes all their lives.

 

In the detention centre in England she spends her time working out ways to commit suicide when ‘the men’ arrive to kill her, because killing herself is a better alternative to being killed. Upon her ‘release’ she travels to Kingston-Upon-Thames to find the people from the beach. Her arrival impacts upon their lives in a big way.

 

The story is told alternatively in the voices of Little Bee and Sarah.

 

It’s not a difficult read but is one which tackles what is considered a difficult subject well and sensitively and possibly will challenge the way some people look at the subject of asylum. Although it’s a serious subject, there is the right balance of seriousness and humour. I found the characters likeable, despite their obvious faults, and Sarah’s young son ‘Batman’ was especially endearing! It was he who helped give the novel a lift of mood.

 

As an aside, I wondered if farmer at beginning was ‘above board’ or whether he was planning to hand Little Bee and her companions over to the authorities, but that was never fully explored.

 

I never read the reviews on Amazon until after I’ve finished a book. At the time of writing this review, the ratings on there stand as follows:

 

5* = 29 votes, 4* = 18 votes, 3* = 20 votes, 2* = 15 votes, 1* = 14 votes

 

So it seems to be a novel that divides people. A lot of criticism is levelled at the accents of Little Bee and a Jamaican character. I agree that the Jamaican sounded a bit stereotypical (she’s not in the book long though - but had she been I could see myself being irritated by it) but to me, Little Bee’s ‘voice’ sounded like I imagine someone who has learned to speak English through listening to TV and reading English newspapers would sound.

 

It is a novel of hope and the ending left me feeling both uplifted by Little Bee’s final act of bravery and terribly sad at the same time.

 

It’s probably one of my favourite books of 2009. :D

 

10/10

Edited by Janet
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  • 1 year later...

I have just finished this book in tears, which rarely happens! (Actually, I was audibly sobbing, which never happens! Thank goodness I was reading it on my own upstairs!) I found it a thought-provoking read, tragic and beautiful. It will stay with me for a long time I think.

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  • 1 month later...

I have finished it now and I didn't cry. In fact I wasn't overly impressed by the ending I felt it was a bit "rushed"

 

I still really enjoyed the book overall though. I really liked the writing style I found it refreshingly different. Cleave manage to use two techniques that I don't usually like in a way that didn't jar with me like they normally do, those styles being:

 


  •  
  • "two handers" a story being told from two different points of view not only did Cleave use this style well but it made the story too
  • "colloquialisms" normally I want to give up on books using colloquialisms but Cleave got them bang and and helped develop the characters so much more

And as an added bonus it wasn't anywhere near as graphic as I had been lead to believe.

 

I will give 8.5 /10

 

it gets marked down a point for the ending and half a point for the inclusion of the character Lawrence

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I read this book a few years ago, when it first came out, and loved it. For me it was particularly poignant as so many of the scenes were set in the area where I used to live (Kingston upon Thames/Richmond Park). It is definately worth picking up again. Those that criticise immigration should read this book, as it would almost certainly change their views.

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