I asked a friend of mine for a book recommendation, and, recommendation in hand, I trucked down to Birchbark Books (a local bookstore in Minneapolis, owned by Louise Erdrich--and if you're ever in the Lakes area in Minneapolis, you ought to stop in for a visit) and picked up Little Bee, the sophomore novel by Chris Cleave.
Written with all the contemporary bells and whistles (shifting narrators, thematic obsession, etc.), Little Bee tracks the its titular character's (Little Bee) struggle to find asylum in the U.K., and the life of a recently widowed reporter-turned-Cosmo smut peddler. They meet, of course, and they share a past, of course, and the result is a wonderful tragedy (in the broad sense). There's even a stand-in for a Greek Chorus; what's not to love?
It's heartbreaking at time: What else would you expect from a book about a 16-year-old Nigerian undocumented immigrant fleeing machete-wielding death? Fortunately, Cleave's wit and black humor is some of the best I've seen:
I have never been one of those happy women who insist that disaster strikes from a clear blue sky. For me, there were countless foretellings, innumerable small breaks with normalcy. Andrew's chin unshaved, a second bottle uncorked on a weekday night, the use of passive voice on deadline Friday. Certain attitudes which have been adopted by this society have left this commentator a little lost. That was the very last sentence my husband wrote. In his Times column, he was always so precise with the written word. From a layperson, lost would be a synonym for bewildered. From my husband, it was a measured good-bye.
Witty? yes. A disarming love of (obsession with?)language befitting a contemporary novelist? yes. Not black humor though, so here's this, from the mouth of Little Bee:
There are things the men can do to you in this life, I promise you, it would be much better to kill yourself first. Once you have this knowledge, your eyes are always flickering from this place to that, watching for the moment when the men will come. [...]
One day the detention officers gave all of us a copy of a book called LIFE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. It explains the history of your country and how to fit in. I planned how I would kill myself in the time of Churchill (stand under bombs), Victoria (throw myself under a horse), and Henry the Eighth (marry Henry the Eighth). I worked out how to kill myself under Labour and Conservative governments, and why it was not important to have a plan for suicide under the Liberal Democrats. I began to understand how your country worked.
I laughed out loud, and before I could feel bad about laguhing at suicide plans, I dove back in. A good trick: make 'em laugh but feel bad for laughing. The only thing to do is read on.
Another:
"I think I shall teach you the names of all of the English flowers," said Sarah. "This is fuchsia, and this is a rose, and this is honeysuckle. What? What are you smiling about?"
"There are no goats. That is why you have all these beautiful flowers."
"There were goats, in your villiage?"
"Yes, and they ate all the flowers."
"I'm sorry."
"Do not be sorry. We ate all the goats."
Another:
I mean look," he said. "There's eight million people here pretending the others aren't getting on their nerves. I believe it's called civilization."
Also, keep your eyes peeled for a delicious--but too long--joke about a taxi driver, David Bowie, and the multiple meanings of the word 'cock.' I haven't laughed so hard in ages.
Of course, the book isn't all black comedy. And though it uses pomo literary techniques, it falls prey to none of the masturbatory vanity on display in many of those works. Indeed, Little Bee stays grounded because despite all the language games textual awareness, it contains an emotional and thematic core to strong to be caught up in the shifting currents of Theory.
In an interview (helpfully, and obnoxiously included at the end of this book. I'm fairly certain I dislike the practice of including, generally useless, information in the back of books. It makes me feel as though I'm being talked down to by the publishers, but I digress...), Cleave says:
[H]ere's the true story that inspired me to write Little Bee. In 2001, an Angolan man named Manuel Bravo fled to England and claimed asylum on the grounds that he and his family would be persecuted and killed if they were returned to Angola. He lived in a state of uncertainty for four years pending a decision on his application. Then, without warning, in September 2005, Manuel Bravo and his thirteen-year-old son were seized in a dawn raid and interned at an Immigration Removal Centre in southern England. They were told that they would be forcibly deported to Angola the next morning. That night, Manuel Bravo took his own life by hanging himself in a stairwell. His son was awakened in his cell and told the news. What had happened was that Manuel Bravo, aware of a rule under which unaccompanied minors cannot be deported from the UK, had taken his own life in order to save the life of his son. His last words to his child were: "Be brave. Work hard. Do well at school."
This may be unfair, but, as a general rule, it is easy to play language games and call it a day when you're writing about your own existential crises; it's much harder to base a book on some foundation-less, ever-shifting mire of words when you're writing about a man who kills himself to save his son.
(And not to be glib, but I find in horrible and hilarious that the very next question in the interview is "What can we expect next from you?" I honestly can't fathom hearing about the plight of Manuel Bravo, and then asking about "What's next?" Let's hope the interview is heavily edited.)
If you're interested, I do recommend the book. It's all of those adjectives you read on the back of books. It's also a perfect example of how to use the devices of pomo lit for good. Huzzah!
A reminder: I get paid if you buy a copy by clicking on the link up top. Rest assured, I dislike a great deal of what I read, though I probably won't write about those, so I'm not just talking up Little Bee to make a quick buck (keeping in mind that my checks include fractions of pennies). If you have the good fortune of living near a small bookstore like Birchbark, then don't buy Little Bee (or books in general) from Amazon/Me; buy your books from the corner shop, and make the world a better place.
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