Book 68- Little Bee

Insurmountable frustration is how I felt over Little Bee, by Chris Cleave. And I've checked this out from the library about 4 times since June and I swore this time I was going to read it; and now I wish I hadn't. But it came recommended from a friend with brilliant taste in books, who's never steered me wrong, until now, that is.

Little Bee, the name she gave herself when she found herself detained in a British detention center for refugees for over 2 years, has seen nothing but tragic events and heart ache. As I read this book, with one tragedy heaped up on another, all on this young girl, one after the other, I knew there would be a happy ending, some sort of goodness, some sort of retribution or redemption. There had to be.

Even when she got out of the detention center and found the only character in the book that had a heart, the only person who could save her, the only person who loved her... circumstances were manipulated, so bad stuff continued to happen.

I was frustrated and I tremendously disliked this book. It's not written in some Orwellian era of Britain and her lands, but now, modern times. I also found it difficult to read in the dialect of the detention center detainees. I also found it irritating that within the plot Cleave kept making reference to something that happened "on the beach" and the reference to a missing finger. That was supposed to be a mystery but it just was so overplayed that by the time Cleave got to the reveal, I was ready to chuck the book out the nearest window.

I did not enjoy my Little Bee reading experience. This was so sad and depressing that I planned how to kill myself with this book as I was reading. If you read this novel, you'll get the irony of the statement. Otherwise, as a fellow blogger said, it's books like these- so overwhelmingly, all encompassingly depressing with no happiness in sight- that it should come with a razor blade for the reader.

Feh.