Book Review by Cos Barnes, October 2010

Before I read a book, I scan the flyleaf, the acknowledgments, the notes and the biography of the author. With this book I got an added bonus with this Nigerian proverb: “If your face is swollen from the severe beatings of life, smile and pretend to be a fat man.”

This could be the philosophy of Little Bee, the protagonist in this story. A 16-year-old Nigerian girl whose life was destroyed when men came to drill an oil field in her village. She describes a swing of her childhood: “I used to watch the swing all day long and I never realized I was watching a pendulum counting down the last seasons of peace in my village.”

Little Bee and her sister’s parents have been killed in a massacre and while fleeing the two girls chance to meet a young and charming couple, Sarah and Andrew, both journalists, he a celebrated columnist, she an editor of a chic magazine, who are enjoying a free vacation on the beach and trying to patch an ailing marriage. Little do they suspect what awaits them, but it eventually leads to Andrew’s depression and suicide.

Little Bee’s sister is brutally killed by the men who pillage the village, but Little Bee, a survivor by nature, escapes. then spends two years in a detention center where she learns much of western ways, then slowly wends her way to Sarah’s home (she has saved Andrew’s driver’s license which was in his wallet the day on the beach) and arrives in time for his funeral.

It is a grim tale, told chapter by chapter in Little Bee’s voice and Sarah’s. Adding some pleasant relief is Batman, Sarah’s three-year-old son who only answers to that title, never to his name, Charlie, and wears his batman suit every day, even to his father’s funeral. And, of course, Sarah has a lover, Lawrence. The magic of the book is how the story unfolds.