The Other Hand
The Other Hand, also known as Little Bee, is a 2008 novel by British author Chris Cleave. It is a dual narrative story about a Nigerian asylum-seeker and a British magazine editor, who meet during the oil conflict in the Niger Delta, and are re-united in England several years later. Cleave, inspired as a university student by his temporary employment in an asylum detention centre, wrote the book in an attempt to humanise the plight of asylum-seekers in Britain. The novel examines the treatment of refugees by the asylum system, as well as issues of British colonialism, globalization, political violence and personal accountability.
The novel was published by Sceptre, an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton. Sales were initially slow, but increased as a result of "word-of-mouth" publicity, with the book eventually ranking 13th on the 2009 Sunday Times bestseller list. It has also been ranked #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. The novel has received mixed reviews from critics. It has been praised for its focus on underlying human decency; however, some reviewers felt its events were contrived. The two protagonists have been juxtaposed, with less sympathy evoked by Surrey-born Sarah than Nigerian-refugee Little Bee. The novel was nominated for the 2008 Costa Book Awards and a 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize. A film adaptation is now in pre-production, and will be produced by and star Julia Roberts. Amazon Studios will be distributing the film.
Background
Cleave spent his early childhood in West Africa, which he credits for having partially inspired The Other Hand. Further inspiration came from Cleaves's temporary employment while studying experimental psychology at the University of Oxford. During the summer, Cleave painted underpasses, gardened and picked up litter, and hoped to use this experience to write a book. His final job was at Campsfield House in Oxfordshire, an immigration detention centre. Cleave spent three days serving food to residents from war zones including Somalia, Eritrea and the Balkans. He explained: "I got talking with some of them and said why are you here? Why are you in prison? It's not illegal and yet we concentrate them in these places. It's a text-book definition of a concentration camp. The conditions are appalling. I was shocked enough for that to be the end of my light comedy book of my amusing summers working as a labourer." Cleave believes he would not have written the novel were he not a parent, as he does not wish for his children "to grow up into a world that is callous and stupid."In 2005, an incident inspired Cleave to write The Other Hand. Four years previously, in 2001, an Angolan asylum-seeker named Manuel Bravo had arrived in England with his 9-year-old son. After being detained in an immigration centre for four years, officials decided to forcibly deport Bravo and his son back to Angola the next morning. During the night, Bravo committed suicide, aware that his son, who was still a minor, could not be deported unaccompanied. Cleave felt compelled to write about the "dirty secret" that is the British immigration system, and to do so in such a way as to showcase the "unexpected humour" of the refugees wherever possible, in order to make the book "an enjoyable and compelling read" for his audience. Cleave explained:
Plot
Using alternating first-person perspectives, the novel tells the stories of Little Bee, a Nigerian refugee, and Sarah O'Rourke, a magazine editor from Surrey. After spending two years detained in a British immigration detention centre, Little Bee is illegally released after a fellow refugee performs sexual favours for a detention officer. She travels to the home of Sarah and her husband Andrew, whom she met two years previously on a beach in the Niger Delta. Sarah is initially unaware of Little Bee's presence, until Andrew, haunted by guilt of their shared past, commits suicide. Little Bee reveals herself to Sarah on the day of Andrew's funeral, and helps her to care for her four-year-old son Charlie.Through a mutual reflection on their past, it is revealed that Sarah and Andrew were on holiday at the time of their meeting with Little Bee. The trip was an attempt to salvage their marriage after Andrew discovered Sarah had been unfaithful to him, embarking on an affair with Home Office employee Lawrence Osborn. While walking on the beach one morning, they were approached by a then 14-year-old Little Bee, and her older sister Nkiruka. The girls were being pursued by soldiers who had burned down their village and intended for there to be no witnesses left alive. The soldiers arrived and murdered a guard from the O'Rourkes' hotel, but offered to spare the lives of the girls if Andrew would amputate his own middle finger with a machete. Afraid, and believing the soldiers would murder the girls anyway, Andrew refused, but Sarah complied in his place. The soldiers took both girls away, leaving the couple in doubt as to whether the soldiers would leave one girl alive in response, as they promised.
Little Bee explains that although Nkiruka was gang raped, murdered, and cannibalised by the soldiers, she was allowed to escape, and stowed away in the cargo hold of a ship bound for England. Sarah allows Little Bee to stay with her, intent on helping her become a legal British citizen. Lawrence, who is still involved with Sarah, disapproves of her actions and contemplates turning Little Bee in to the police. When he informs Little Bee that he is considering this, she responds that allowing her to stay would be what is best for Sarah, so if Lawrence turns her in, Little Bee will get revenge by telling his wife Linda about his affair. The two reach an uneasy truce. After spending several days together, Sarah, Lawrence, Little Bee and Charlie take a trip to the park. Charlie goes missing, and Little Bee calls the police while Sarah searches for him. Although he is quickly found, the police become suspicious of Little Bee, and discover that she is in the country illegally.
Little Bee is detained and quickly deported back to Nigeria, where she believes she will be killed. Lawrence uses his Home Office connections to track Little Bee's deportation details, and Sarah and Charlie are able to accompany her back home. Sarah believes that Little Bee will be safe as long as she is present, and together they begin collecting stories for a book Andrew had begun, and which Sarah intends to finish on his behalf, about the atrocities committed in the Nigerian oil conflict. During a trip to the same beach where they first encountered one another, soldiers arrive to take Little Bee away. Despite being captured, Little Bee is not dispirited, and instead is ultimately hopeful at the sight of Charlie playing happily with a group of Nigerian children.
Characters
The primary characters in The Other Hand are Little Bee, a Nigerian refugee, and Sarah, a middle-class Englishwoman. Critics have focused on the contrast between the two, with Caroline Elkins of The New York Times commenting that Sarah might initially appear "insipid" to readers, and that when juxtaposed with Little Bee, she seems "unsympathetic, even tiresome". Tim Teeman of The Times deemed Sarah "batty, bizarre and inconsistent, and despite the tragedy she has suffered, unsympathetic", while writing that in contrast: "Goodness peppers every atom of being." Other reviewers took an opposite stance. Margot Kaminski of the San Francisco Chronicle found Little Bee's characterisation problematic, writing: "Sometimes she's not convincing, and sometimes she tries too hard to convince. It's too often apparent that Little Bee is not real. This doesn't do justice to her story, and puts the burden back on the author to show that he's representing her, rather than exploiting her." Ed Lake of The Daily Telegraph felt that "Bee's arch reasonableness and implausibly picturesque speech mean she often comes off as a too-cute cipher", and ultimately found Sarah the more convincing character.The Guardian Lawrence Norfolk commented that Sarah is a "far from perfect heroine: a semi-neglectful mother and unfaithful wife", but noted that "Cleave does not mock Sarah any more than he does Little Bee and her experiences in Nigeria." Norfolk felt that: "For all the characters' faults, none of them is presented as inauthentic or standing for something that we are intended to disbelieve." On the disparity in sympathy for Sarah and Little Bee, Cleave assessed: "Sarah inevitably suffers by proximity to Little Bee, who is much easier to like. If Sarah is more twisted, I think it's because her path through life has necessarily been more convoluted. Little Bee's life is extremely harrowing but it is also very simple – she is swimming very hard against the current, struggling to survive and not to be swept away. Sarah doesn’t have the luxury of knowing in which direction she should swim."
Steve Giergerich of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch felt that Sarah and Little Bee are both "so richly drawn that the supporting characters suffer by comparison." These supporting characters are Andrew, Sarah's husband, Lawrence, her lover, Clarissa her colleague and Charlie, her four-year-old son, who for much of the novel answers only to "Batman" and dresses only in his Batman costume. Sarah Liss of CBC News deemed Andrew and Lawrence the two least-likeable characters in the novel, describing Andrew as "an ordinary guy with self-righteous beliefs who comes up slightly short when he's tested by real life" and Lawrence as a "cowardly yes-man". Cleave agreed that for Lawrence, "career and propriety are more important than basic morality. He's gone so far down that road that he can't come back, and he's made more villainous for all the things he could do but doesn't." Charlie is based on Cleave's oldest son, who similarly spent six months aged four answering only to "Batman". He forms the emotional centre of the novel, holding the adult characters together, and is a study in the early formation of identity. Cleave explained: "Little Bee is a novel about where our individuality lies – which layers of identity are us, and which are mere camouflage. So it's a deliberate choice to use the metaphor of a child who is engaging in his first experiments with identity – in Charlie's case by taking on the persona of a superhero."