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Little Bee, by Chris Cleave

Chapter One:  Little Bee is a Nigerian girl held in a refugee center in England. First chapter is in her voice, wonderfully done.  At 14, she spends the day in the center with both men and women.  She feels the men hungry for women.  Her strategy is to make herself ugly. She hides her body, doesn't bathe, doesn't change clothes.  She does learn English very well, her ticket to success, she hopes.

Chapter ends with her release from immigration center after two years(!). She and four other women, all black, are released at the same time.  There is a scene where they call a taxi that doesn't ring true to me.  2008 or so -- just released with no help whatsoever?  It certainly wouldn't happen in America. The women have no lodgings, even.

The scene calling the taxi is very well done once the suspension of disbelief kicks in, but in an other wise wonderful section, it seemed overdone.  For example, there is a great section where Little Bee says that all the various horror stories the women tell one another begin with:  "Men came . . ."  It reduces all the tribal, ethnic, religious, etc. violence of our world to its core.  Strange men show up and do horrible things all around the world.

Little Bee hopes to arrange for the whole group of released detainees to go the home of a man she met one day on a beach in Nigeria--he answers the phone but either doesn't or won't recognize her.  She says:  We're coming.

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