Author Q & A
Here is a full author Q&A about LITTLE BEE / THE OTHER HAND – everything from the true stories surrounding the novel right through to discussion of its characters and themes. These are the questions that readers and interviewers have been asking me, and I’ve tried to answer them as best as I can. I hope you’ll find this helpful.
Thanks to all the readers who’ve sent me questions. Thanks to Bond Street Books and Simon & Schuster for their input too. Special thanks to Daniel Goldin at Boswell Books – some of the best questions are from an interview I did with him. If you have any suggestions for how I can make this page more useful, please let me know via email or via the comments box. If you or your book club have a question, I’ll do my best to answer it. If you’ve arrived at this page you’ve come quite far, so thank you for being interested.
Is the novel based on a true story?
No, but there’s one true story in particular that made me determined to write the novel. 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 13-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 awoken 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. Among his last words to his child were: “Be brave. Work hard. Do well at school.”
It’s quite common for novels to change titles when they cross the Atlantic. I like both the titles the novel is published under. “The Other Hand” is a good title because it speaks to the dichotomous nature of the novel, with its two narrators and two worlds, while it also references Sarah’s injury. “Little Bee” is a good title too, because the novel is really Little Bee’s story, so it’s a straightforward and an honest title. Also I like it because it sounds bright and approachable – and my aim with this novel was to write an accessible story about a serious subject. I like the fact that the novel has two titles. I like it when divergent choices are simultaneously right. While we’re on the subject, I like my name. I think “cleave” might be unique in having two synonyms that are antonyms of each other. You see? I’m doomed…
Did you have a personal reason to write the novel?
Yes, there was a chance encounter that really shook me up. Around fifteen years ago I was working as a casual labourer over the university summer vacation, and for three days I worked in the canteen of Campsfield House in Oxfordshire. It’s a detention centre for asylum seekers – a prison, if you like, full of people who haven’t committed a crime. I’d been living within ten miles of the place for three years and didn’t even know it existed. The conditions in there were very distressing. I got talking with asylum seekers who’d been through hell and were likely to be sent back to hell. Some of them were beautiful characters and it was deeply upsetting to see how we were treating them. When we imprison the innocent we make them ill, and when we deport them it’s often a death sentence. I knew I had to write about it, because it’s such a dirty secret. And I knew I had to show the unexpected humour of these refugees wherever I could, and to make the book an enjoyable and compelling read – because otherwise people’s eyes would glaze over.
Was it your intention to change people’s minds about asylum seekers?
Readers are smart and I’m not in the business of lecturing them. I see my job as providing new information in an entertaining way. Readers will then use that information as the spirit moves them. I think the job is important because there’s something you can do in fiction that you don’t have the space to do in news media, which is to give back a measure of humanity to the subjects of an ongoing story. When I started to imagine the life of one asylum seeker in particular, rather than asylum seekers in general, the scales fell from my eyes in regard to any ideological position I might have held on the issue. It’s all about exploring the mystery and the wonder of an individual human life. Life is precious, whatever its country of origin.
What could Little Bee do if she was allowed to stay as a permanent citizen?
I think Little Bee could do anything she set her mind to, because by definition she is a survivor. When I was a teenager in the 1980s, we thought of asylum seekers as heroes. The hundreds who died while trying to cross the Berlin Wall, for example. Or the pilots, performers and scientists who defected from the Soviet Union. Or the heroes of previous generations – Sigmund Freud, who fled to London to escape the Nazis, or Anne Frank, who could not flee far enough. Albert Einstein, Karl Marx, Joseph Conrad – all of them refugees – I could go on and on. When horror and darkness descend, asylum seekers are the ones who get away. They are typically above average in terms of intellectual gifts, far-sightedness, motivation and resilience. These are the people you want to have on your side. It will be a monument to our hubris if we allow ourselves to start thinking of them as a burden.
The quote is “Britain is proud of its tradition of providing a safe haven for people fleeting [sic] persecution and conflict.” I took it from Life in the United Kingdom, which is the text book given to immigrants preparing for their citizenship test in the UK. It covers British history, government and etiquette. It offers the excellent advice “If you spill a stranger’s drink by accident, it is good manners (and prudent) to offer to buy another.” Less gloriously, though, its summary of British history is rather selective, and the work as a whole is riddled with inaccuracies and typographical errors. My belief is that if a refugee is prepared to walk away from a regime that has imprisoned and tortured her, flee to the UK, apply for asylum, and commit to memory the contents of the text book we make compulsory for her, then for our part we should at least be prepared to have that text book professionally copy-edited. The typo in that opening quotation is a nice example of a bureaucracy that is pretending to care, but not pretending very hard.
Are refugee detention centres a necessary evil? Given the chance, what would you change about them?
I hope all evil is unnecessary. Most of the UK immigration detention centres are run for private profit by secretive companies. So, firstly, I’d take the profit motive out of detaining asylum seekers – because they are human beings, not a cash crop for investors. Second, I’d limit the time for which asylum seekers can be detained. As it stands they can be held in the detention system for a long time – sometimes for years – while the Home Office shuffles their paperwork. This destroys their mental health. Thirdly I’d stop the detention of refugee children. The UK Chief Inspector of Prisons wrote in a 2008 report: “The plight of detained children remained of great concern. While child welfare services had improved, an immigration removal centre can never be a suitable place for children and we were dismayed to find cases of disabled children being detained and some children spending large amounts of time incarcerated.” That same report also stated: “Escort vehicles with caged compartments were inappropriately used to transport children.” Surely I’m not the only one who wants to cry when they read that.
Has your depiction of the immigration detention centre got you into any hot water in the UK?
No, not at all. First, because the UK is still one of the best places in the world to practice the art of free speech. That’s something truly great about Great Britain, and it’s a civil right we defend through regular exercise. We don’t have a constitution or a bill of rights to enshrine it, so we must practice it in our lives until it becomes an inbred instinct of a free people. Second, I think my depiction of a British immigration detention centre is accurate in the salient respects. It’s based on research and it would be hard to take issue with it on factual grounds, so people haven’t. That’s not to say that everyone likes me for doing it, but frankly that’s their problem and not mine. The British treatment of asylum seekers brings shame and ignominy on the nation. I didn’t invent that treatment. I’m trying to focus attention on it.
How did writing Little Bee differ from your experience with your previous works?
I’ve only published one previous novel, which is called Incendiary (2005). Incendiary is about the emotional climate that brought us the “War on Terror”. As a writer one is easily frightened when the West declares war on a noun, but at the time I felt it acutely because our first child had just been born and I hated the way our elected leaders were so clearly making his world a more dangerous place. When I get scared it tends to come out as dark comedy, or layered irony – anyway, Incendiary was how it came out. I wrote the draft in six weeks in early 2004, after the Madrid bombings and while the Abu Ghraib torture story was breaking. I went into a room in Paris with a coffee maker and a radio and I came out six weeks later with a beard and a manuscript, not really knowing how I’d done it.
The new novel [Little Bee / The Other Hand] came out of a sense of my own complicity in some of the evils of the world. I’d moved on from considering myself as an outraged – and blameless – observer, which I guess is where I was at with Incendiary. A year on, I realised that people like me are often part of the problem. I began to think about my life, and how it is relatively easy, and how it is therefore relatively easy to ignore the suffering of others. And since suffering is the rule rather than the exception in the world, it’s not an easy moral question to duck as a writer. So I decided to address it directly, by imagining the most striking example of someone who is dispossessed – Little Bee – coming to ask for a help from someone – Sarah – who is a little bit more like me. I never plot my work in advance, so I was very interested to discover how the moral ambiguities would play out.
As a writing task, this novel was harder than Incendiary. I did a year of research. I interviewed asylum seekers and people involved in their cases, I researched the oil conflict in Nigeria, and I familiarised myself with Nigerian English and Jamaican English. It was a lot of work before I even started writing. Then the book took nearly two years to write.
I’m able to do it because I have good readers. I can have my characters explore some fairly dark humour – for example, listing methods for a young Nigerian girl to kill herself at a garden party hosted by the Queen of England – while trusting my readers to understand that I am not making light of a serious theme. Rather, I am offering up a dark theme to the light, so that it may be examined. This is the only way I know to tell a serious story about current events without it becoming a lecture. And when I interviewed refugees and asylum seekers while researching this novel, I found that some of them use humour in this way too. These are people with very painful stories to tell. They have learned that in order to survive, they must get people in positions of power to listen to – and believe – their stories. And they have further learned that such people are more likely to listen if they make their stories entertaining, by showing the joy of their lives as well as the tragedy. They are the masters at telling their stories – because if they don’t get that balance right, they die. That’s motivation, right there. As far as storytelling goes, they’re playing in the major leagues. Novelists are amateurs by comparison.
Why does Little Bee talk about how she would have to explain things to “the girls back home”?
The “girls back home” are the novel’s Greek chorus – they are a foil in whose imagined reaction the cultural dissonance experienced by Little Bee can be made explicit. It’s a good device because it feels more natural than having Little Bee go around talking straight to camera and saying “Wow, I’m freaked out by this. And this. And this.” Much better for us to have Little Bee’s thoughts after she has understood the situation and can explain it to the “girls back home” from a position of superior knowledge. This allows us to appreciate the cultural gulf, whilst allowing the narrator to be knowing rather than tragic.
I look at human culture the same way science fiction does, but I look at it through the wrong end of the telescope. In sci-fi an ordinary protagonist discovers an extraordinary world, and the genre is exciting because of the emotional dissonance. But my thing is contemporary realism, so I’m always showing the ordinary world to what is effectively an extraterrestrial protagonist. It’s fun to do. Through this lens the most mundane events – Little Bee drinking a cup of tea in Sarah’s kitchen – acquire an immense significance and a certain beauty. Also, the things in our culture that are sad and ignoble – the fact, for example, that we can enjoy our freedom while imprisoning and deporting those who ask to share in it – appear in sharp focus through the eyes of an alien narrator. We have become accustomed to viewing our own actions in soft focus, but the alien narrator has not yet acquired this cultural immunity. She sees us as we can no longer see ourselves.
How do you expect readers to react to Andrew’s actions on the Nigerian beach?
I don’t have a preconception of how readers will react to that scene. My aim was to create a scene that was perfectly morally ambiguous, and in which the reader might quite justifiably side with either Andrew or Sarah. Andrew isn’t such a bad guy. What he fails to do on the beach is what most people would probably fail to do, myself included. Once Andrew realizes he’s made the wrong choice, it’s too late for him because the moment has passed and he is condemned to spend the rest of his days regretting that he failed life’s test. Sarah is lucky, really. She’s not inherently more moral than her husband, but just at that one critical moment she happened to do the right thing. This means that she can look back on her actions on the beach without too much guilt or shame. She can move on with the rest of her life while Andrew must enter a terminal decline. It’s ironic because Sarah’s infidelity is the reason the couple find themselves on the beach in the first place. And yet her premeditated affair goes unpunished by life, while Andrew’s momentary failure of courage dooms him forever. Life is savagely unfair. It ignores our deep-seated convictions and places a disproportionate emphasis on the decisions we make in split seconds.
Is Charlie/Batman based on your own children?
Charlie is based on our oldest boy, who was four years old when I started the book. For six months he would only answer to “Batman”. For a whole week I just listened to him and took dictation, which certainly beat going out to work for a living. Charlie’s “goodies / baddies” worldview is endearing but of course it’s naive and he’s not in the book as an example of an ideal morality. Charlie is in the novel for two reasons. First because he’s funny and loveable – he gives the novel an emotional centre; a reason for the adult protagonists to not simply walk away from the situation and disperse. Second, Charlie is a study in the early formation of identity. 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.
After nearly two years with this project I realised that the strongest perspective would be a dual one. This is a story of two worlds: the developed and the developing, and of the mutual incomprehension that sometimes dooms them to antagonism. So by taking one woman from each side of the divide, and investing each with a compulsion to understand the other, I was able to let the story unpack itself in the mind of the reader. This was a huge breakthrough for me. One shouldn’t underestimate the role of the reader in this novel. I wanted to write a story that was never made fully explicit; which relied on the reader’s interpretation of the characters’ dialogue. Once you trust the reader with the story, the writing is really fun to do.
It’s not without its technical challenges, of course. As a man it requires concentration to write from a female perspective, but I see that as an advantage. If I’m consciously writing someone so different from myself, then I’m protected from the trap of using my own voice to animate the character. It forces me to listen, to think, and to write more precisely. Using two narrators is difficult though. To differentiate their vocabulary, grammar and idioms is quite straightforward if you make an effort to understand and inhabit the characters, but the hard thing is how you handle the overlaps and the gaps in the characters’ knowledge. When both narrators have witnessed an event, which one will you choose to recount it? Or will you let both of them tell it, and play with their different perspectives on what they’ve seen? When you use your narrators in series, you need to work to make it not feel like a TV show with bad links between segments. But when you use them in parallel, you need to take pains to avoid the text feeling repetitive.
Add into the mix the fact that the story is not told in linear time – the first half of the book is working backwards into history, while the second half works forwards into the future – and it quickly gets complicated. The trick is to make it read smoothly. It’s scary how many drafts you go through till you achieve something that reads simply.
Why is Sarah so much harder to like than Little Bee?
I like Sarah, but I’m also glad when people don’t. I like them for not liking her, because it probably means they have a strong moral sense and don’t suffer fools gladly. But maybe they should give her a break. Sarah’s not perfect, that’s for sure. But actually when you look at what she does, it’s very noble. She sacrifices herself, both mentally and physically, in order to save the life of a stranger. To my mind that excuses a lot of her shitty behavior – the adultery, the cynical day job, the aloofness. By contrast her husband, Andrew, is a moral paragon in his world, and yet when real life suddenly arrives to test him, he is found wanting. I also think 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. And so she takes some bad directions, makes some bad choices in her life, but ultimately her heart is good and she proves it.
Is the ending meant to be tragic or hopeful?
I trust the reader to have their own idea of the characters and of their destiny. The problem with novels is that they are like the real-life relationships they describe: they are readily begun, and they never reach a definitive end where the whole thing achieves completion. So, being quite committed to realism, I trust the reader to see that. I have unusually great readers, I think. I get lots of email that makes me realize the level they’re operating on, and that I can trust them more and more in my future work. I don’t need to lay everything out or make everything obvious. I like it when readers bring their own inner life to the party.
What other writers do you like?
I admire Cormac McCarthy most among the living writers. It’s hardly an original position to take, but what can I say? What can anyone say about a man who has given us such an incredible body of work over several decades and who can then, in his seventies, write “The Road”, a novel which would tip the scales when weighed against all of his previous work?
I also like writers who can make me laugh while telling a compelling story. For this reason I love the work of John Steinbeck. It’s his little novels I like more than the important ones. Whenever I’m feeling low I go back and read the scene from Cannery Row where Doc orders a beer milkshake.
There are also some writers whose work I like and who aren’t as widely read as I think they should be. I think Howard Jacobson is among the greatest British writers, and his novel “Kalooki Nights” is one of the best of the last ten years. Alex Wheatle writes superb stories steeped in the street life and the vernacular of South London, and his new novel “The Dirty South” is excellent. And Ross Raisin is definitely one to watch in Britain. He’s an excellent writer with strong principles, and his first book “God’s Own Country” is great.
Why do you write novels anyway?
I do it because I don’t know much about the world and I want to find out more. I enjoy the work of educating myself through research, and then I enjoy the process of writing. Novels are incredibly intricate engines, and if you change one little piece here, it can throw the whole thing out of equilibrium way over there. So you spend half your time with tweezers and a jeweler’s eyepiece, and the other half with safety goggles and a lump hammer. And eventually, usually around three in the morning, the thing just clicks into gear and runs. It’s the most uplifting feeling. I get it about once every three years.
Entries (RSS)
I have just finished reading The Other Hand. To say it has deeply affected me is an understatement. Whilst it can be shocking and upsetting, there is still laugh out loud humour and the most amazing story-telling. Totally fantastic!
I bought “Incendiary” without realising what it was about. If someone had told me in a sentence, I wouldn’t have bought it but would have missed an extraordinary and wonderful book. So I simply had to buy “Other Hand” as soon as I saw it. And I wasn’t disappointed. Yet another amazing book, brilliant in raising such complex and shocking issues in so deceptively simple a story. Chris has the power to conjure up the emotions a person would feel in circumstances most of us can’t even imagine. I can’t wait for his next book.
I read ‘The Other Hand’ this summer, and I have never found a piece of literature to be so compelling, engaging, heartwarming, thought provoking, informative, insightful, and quite simply beautifully written. To even remind myself of the story, the characters, or moments in the writing just fills me with a feeling I can not describe.
I want everyone to read this book.
Once everyone has read this book, I then want everyone to read ‘Blue Sky July’ by Nia Wynn.
Thanks,
Katy
I literally just read the last page. Your book is so emotive and real I am weeping whilst I type. Our treatment of refugees in Australia is also shocking, callous and shameful. I don’t understand how people and governments disassociate themselves from such harmful immigration policies that foster such misery and do so little to ameliorate the suffering of the most marginalised.
Dear Chris
I have just finished reading ‘The Other Hand’. Thank you for a beautifully written book and a captivating story. You are a wonderful writer.
You manage to take such serious (and horrific) issues and make the reader just want to keep reading through their tears.
I have learned so much about refugees and detention centres from your book.
Thank you.
Penelope
Dear Chris, thank you for a wonderful experience , “The Other Hand”. I laughed and I cried and also felt ashamed. You are a very talented author to be able to write about two powerfully connected women with such sensitivity and emotion. Thank you…
Thank you for another fantastic read.
In my experience life is tragic comedy in scales small and large, and surely there is no futher proof needed of fate’s dark sense of humour than the cruel lotteryof country of birth
‘The other hand’ was a humbling reminder of the luxury i have in my safe 1sr world country to have the chance to enjoy each day. And a further reminder that those who have the least seem to possess a generousity beyond material means lacking in our consumer culture.
This is the first book I have ever read where i finished the last chapter and when straight back and read the first again because I just wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Little Bee.
I shall be agressively recommending it to all especially my male aquaintances so you can hopefully get some gushing feedback from someone with a man’s name.
Look forward to your next offering.
Thank you for writing a very accessible .warm and engaging book. You manage to deliver the issue in a way that we can all relate to.
I live and work in East London, I meet people who occasionally i realise are illegal, but what worries me is not just the coldness of the system, but also what happens to them when they are too old too get work and cannot get benefits etc. what abyss will they fall into then? How would a 70 yr old cope being sent back to Kingston JA, with no family, money etc and maybe still scared of being killed.
How will he cope here with no family, too scared to even go to a doctor?
There was much i recognised and related to in your book.
In any case I won’t be packing a green bikini and checking out JA. Thanks for the inspiration and good luck with your future projects,x
I picked up ‘the other hand’ purely by chance and i’m really glad i did. Writing a story about an immigrant can be difficult to portray with all the mixtures of emotion without compromising the story. I believe you successfully showed your character to be very much 3-dimensional, as so often immigrants are painted in one light, mostly in tragic circumstances. I know it won’t happen anytime soon but I really hope the home office can change their policies on waiting times. As an organisation,they fail to realise how a simple decision they make/do not make on time contributes to a needless gradual mental anguish faced by so many people.
Dear Chris,
I bought your book in an airport, I’m not sure why it attracted my attention.. I have to confess I’d never heard of you or your writing before. I opened the book at page one as the plane took off…and looked up with dismay as the plane touched down two hours later and i was in the midst of reading the beach scene. I honestly contemplated sitting down in the airport to read to the end of the book before driving home, but decided not to worry my children who were waiting for me! I finished reading the book that evening.Its a long time since i’ve felt so compelled to continue reading to the end of a book and to recommend it to everyone I know. I’ve never written to an author before either but felt I had to congratulate you on this incredible story. So many people in Britain are brainwashed by tabloid headlines screaming out about the unjustness of “free handouts” to parasitical immigrants and asylum seekers, who come to Britain to sponge and enjoy our benefits – your book tells the real story so beautifully it should be compulsory reading especially for people who believe everything they read in the papers!
I hope that other readers are equally inspired to look at the websites/ reading you suggest and are spurred into action as i have been.
Thank you
Jan.
I thought I was on the wrong page (that happens a lot) because everyone is reading “The Other Hand,” while I was reading “Little Bee.” Then I realized that the same book had two different titles and cover art. I wonder why?
And, I have to tell you, even though it might seem rude, I get so mad when I read a book like this. It absolutely ruins me for almost every other book for months and months. It happened with Memoirs of a Geisha and Kite Runner and now, it’s finally happened again. Spoiled Americans, I know. But I’m happy to say I haven’t read your first book yet and will be picking it up as soon as possible.
I must also mention that whoever wrote the blurb for the inside front cover is a genius. I picked up the book and set it back down three times, but after reading that, I was compelled to pick it up and bring it home.
I read, on average, 3 books a week, but I took seven full days to read this one because it was so much like expensive chocolate (I’m a dedicated chocoholic). It’s rich with detail, it lingers as a luxuriant experience long after you’ve finished it, and even though you want to gobble it all down in one bite, you so want it to last and last even more.
Please allow me to add my thanks to you for writing this book. And please don’t ever stop writing.
Chris Cleave is a great author. I am very much impressed by his writing . the interview truly described his passion for writing and sincerity. i think we re lucky to have authors like Chris.
I have just finished your book and am amazed at the emotions it has provoked. What a beautiful book to enlighten so many senses, reality, tortue and hope.
I chose the book for it’s cover ( I know you should never so that), but when I read the back I was also very entrigued. I will advise all my friends to read it, although I’d ask them not to read what happened to Little Bee’s sister – it truly upset me, but realise that it is probably quite realistic. I am going to go and buy your other book now – Fantastic. Thank you for a wonderful three days of reading.
Dear Chris,
I have just finished reading Little Bee / The Other Hand and am emotionally exhausted! Thank you for a truly incredible book. There were so many times when I couldn’t see the words through my tears and had to put it down and sob loudly into my pillow before I felt I could carry on reading. It was truly unbearable in parts – so tragic, so achingly beautiful. Little Bee touched my heart in a way that I cannot describe in words. I can’t believe she’s not real. I have made up my own happy ending in which Lawrence comes striding down the beach and saves the day, using his contacts with important people. I simply cannot bear to imagine that Little Bee didn’t emerge triumphant after all she’d been through. You are a genius and my new favourite author. With the greatest respect and admiration, Kelly-May
A really wonderful story and so well written. I was unable to put it down because I was hooked from the first page. I laughed and cried and thought Little Bee was wonderful. I would love to know what happened to her and I feel so sad that she may not have made it after all she went through.
What a beautifully written, wonderfully told story. I don’t remember the last time I felt so compelled to finish a book on the one hand, while struggling to slow down and savor every word on the other (no pun intended)! I am convinced the the story has a happy ending based on the first line of the second chapter. I’d be curious to know if I’m reading too much into it…
I don’t think I will ever feel the same again when pumping gas into my car. What a profound book. Wish you could have included the Northshire Bookstore in Vermont on your tour. I’m the event coordinator, and we’d be happy to have you if you ever come this way.
Thank you Linda – and thanks for the invitation. I’d love to visit on my next trip if that’s okay with you. And sorry about the gas thing…
What a story! And an education… Thought provoking, I am still reeling – read the book in practically one sitting. Thank you Chris for making me sit up and reconsider my world.
Oh yeah!! Two sittings and it was done. That is the most unfortunate thing about your book…it’s finished.
My ending was a happy one…eventually for LittleBee.
I am not sure about the ending of Little Bee. I would like to hear reactions.
Chris, I was deeply moved by your novel. It is a beautiful piece of fiction, and in turns ,turned my blood hot and cold.
I feel though that there are some grave inaccuracies regarding your portrayal of the UK Border Agency. I understand that ultimately the novel is fiction yet the notes at the end of the novel suggest that you have tried to stick to essential facts wherever possible and by reading the comments made above your readers have taken your word as gospel.
I feel it is important to say that the UKBA does not deport unaccompanied minors (Like Littlebee) and the description of her claim to remain in the UK is blurry at best. Would it have been possible to write such a beautiful and harrowing story without ‘fictionalising ‘ the UKBA?
Hi Chris
Have just finished the other hand and have enjoyed every minute… I couldn’t put the book down and then started feeling slightly depressed knowing I was going to finish it a little to quick!! I bought the book at Waterstones and when I read the back for an overview before buying it I just had to read it. The humour about not really saying that much about the story and not spoiling the story for the next reader was great. I had so many laughs which is great medicine for anyone. You have written a beautiful novel and I will be recommending it to all my friends. I haven’t read any of your other books but look forward to reading more. Thanks for creating a novel that was such a pleasure to read. Maybe a follow on as to what happened with Little Bee and Sarah and Charlie would be very much welcomed!!!
Kasia, thank you for your kind words about the book and for the thoughtful tone of your criticisms of it. In answer to the specific point that you make about Little Bee’s deportation, I’m aware (from the story of Manuel Bravo) that minors are not deported, and indeed in the novel Little Bee is no longer a minor when she is deported. With regard to the more general point you make about the UK Border Agency, I am certain that I have not misrepresented the situation in any of its salient aspects. In fact my novel’s criticisms of the immigration detention system pale in comparison with those of Her Majesty’s own Inspectorate of Prisons. For example, the Chief Inspector of Prisons wrote in a 2008 report: “The plight of detained children remained of great concern. While child welfare services had improved, an immigration removal centre can never be a suitable place for children and we were dismayed to find cases of disabled children being detained and some children spending large amounts of time incarcerated.” I would be happy to debate these issues with you or with a representative of UKBA in an open forum. In fact I have asked the Home Office for an interview on several occasions, through their Press Office, but so far they have not been forthcoming. Do get in touch with me on chriscleave at gmail.com if you would like to talk about this. I’m always interested in hearing from people working within the immigration system, and I’d be pleased to speak with you either on the record or off.
Greetings Chris, this is one of the most moving and beautiful novels I have ever read…congrats. Sure makes one thing differently about the world we inhabit. Would love this to be brought to the screen.
My only disappointment is that the story ended…I found myself only reading 10 or so pages at a time to make it last longer.
Cheers to you and yours.
Hi Chris,
I was so moved by your book, that I felt I had to come and find out more about why you wrote it, where you got your inspiration and how you did your research.
It’s a wonderful book and it’s a subject too often overlooked. I really enjoyed Marina Lewyka’s Two Caravans as well, although that is less gritty, at times it is heartbreaking as well.
It’s unlike me to go so far into something, but your reply to Kasia moved me to read some of the reports on detention centres.
I agree with Kasia in that if I had one criticism of your book it would be to say that it paints UKBA employees as racist and uncaring. While I’ve no doubt that many are, there are also people who try desperately to ease the suffering of asylum seekers. The most touching instance I read about was the Manager of Religious Affairs at Dungavel who spoke seven languages and was trying to ensure that everybody used their phone call allowance. I know this is the exception rather than the rule, but I just thought that the good ones could get a mention too.
I just finished reading your amazing novel, ” Little Bee.” As an African woman who immigrated to the USA over fifteen years ago, this book reminded me of what makes us leave everything we know, our families, etc for a “so called” better life. The scars are usually so deep that you often question yourself many times whether it was worth it. Thank you for the attention that you are bringing to the asylum process. Change is on its way! The struggle continues. Thank you.
Like many others on here, I have also just finished Little Bee. Wow. I picked it for my book club on the suggestion from a friend that lives in another city and chose it for her book club. Knowing nothing about it, I dove in and bascially ignored my husband and 17 mos old twins while I read for two days straight. I was completely engrossed and learned, laughed and teared up throughout. I have so many questions as to what happens now? perhaps a follow up and exploring what happened to Yvette on her journey should be considered! Do Sarah and Lawrence end up together? Do Little Bee and Sarah ever see each other again? and how does Charlie fare through this all? Truly an amazing book!
I love to read, hence my degrees in literature. Most current fiction, may be entertaining, but falls short. Little Bee, however, is quite wonderful. What drew me in was the humor. Structurally, I especially liked the circularity with the proverbs and the money. Thematically, I love (and agree) with the common humanity of all. My selection for my bookclub to read is Little Bee!!! We will be discussing your book in May, and I can’t wait. I am sure everyone will have enjoyed your book; and, we should have some interesting conversation. Thank you so very much for putting this book out in the world!
If I sounded at all snobby in the beginning of my posting, I apologize. I should have thought that through beforehand. It’s no excuse, but I had just finished the book, and was excited. Thank you again for your thought provoking novel.
Hi Chris! I haven’t written to an author before but I just wanted to express to you how deeply moved I have been by your novel ‘The Other Hand’. I finished it this morning and I cried in the shower for 20mins thinking about the plight of refugees and asylum seekers. I just can’t stop thinking about Little Bee and all that she represents. I’m going to research volunteering at a refugee centre to see if there’s anything I can do to help – particularly to see if there’s anything that can be done to help the children in the detention centres? It seems to me that even just small things would make a difference, like the nail polish that keeps Little Bee feeling human. I work in the charity sector but I’m on maternity leave at the moment as I have a six month old son. I know it’s a fundamental change that is needed at policy level but on a day-to-day basis, there must be some practical things that people can do? I just wanted to thank you from the botton of my heart for writing this book and will let you know how it goes!
Chris. This was a great book, I am a librarian in the United States I have been looking for a great book for my book club and I just found it. I thank you for your wonderful way of making this book one of the few that change my life. As I have read many but few have touched me like this one. Thank you
Melony, you didn’t sound snobby at all. Thank you for your very kind posting!
Chris;
You’re a brilliant writer telling what I know is all too real..but my heart is broken for all of them. Please write a sequel in which Little Bee survives and becomes a great advocate, with the help of Sarah & Lawrence, to change this inhumane system …and Batman helps the goodies overcome ALL the baddies!
Thanks.,
Carol
a wonderful book i am sorry that i finished it. could read it forever
There is a factual inaccuracy in the last sentence of ‘The Other hand’(Notes). And that is that this book has many hits but simply no misses! Overwhelming and compellingly beautiful. Thank you for what can only be described as an exceptional piece of work. Eagerly awaiting the next offering!
I just finished reading ‘the other hand’ last night. I would like to thank you for writing this extraordinary book. I learnt alot from this book and I cannot wait to read your next one. thanks!
Dear Chris -
Firstly, I’d like to add my thanks. The Other Hand is an incredible book. It’s light? dark? humour was utterly compelling and the descriptions of the British people absolutely accurate. Recommended by a fellow reading enthusiast, I’m in the process of giving it to everyone I know.
Secondly, I am writing an essay for a University assignment on the plight of asylum seekers – would you mind if I quoted your interviews in that? There’s no external publishing, copyrighting or similar, just an essay. I’d be very grateful if I could.
Thank you,
Alex
Alex – thank you for your kind words. Yes, of course, please feel free to quote from any of my stuff. (It’s good of you to ask – although I believe you have a perfect right to quote from the published words of anyone you like, without needing their permission). Good luck with your essay – I hope it goes well. I recommend the excellent information at http://www.refugee-action.org.uk/ if you’re in need of some additional data. All best wishes, Chris
Chris, can I use your site to reply to Kasia?
If she had spent four years fighting for a “Little Bee”, as I have done she would know that the only inaccuracy in your portrayal is that it is too “soft”.
When you have dealings with the UKBA you become convinced that they have compassion and fairness surgically removed when they are employed.
Like you I would love to discuss this matter with Kasia.
I really hope Chris that each person who reads this book is motivated enough to become an active voice for change for these people seekeing asylum.
The asylum process is de-humanising and the potential beauty of each of these human beings is lost behind the bars of our own reluctance to see the reality of the damage that this system does to people. If this book has moved you, as someone who works with asylum seekers here in Ireland, please speak out.
Do what ever you can to make a change and a difference.
“Little Bee” is easily the best book I’ve read since Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth.” You managed to convey more insight, feeling, outrage, and understanding in your concise novel than are found in fictions two and three times as long.
And the writing!! Bravo!!! I am moved and jealous. I will recommend this book to everyone. This is why we have fiction.
Hello Chris
I just had to write to express my true admiration at how On the Other Hand moved me like no other novel ever has. As an avid reader, this is a statement not made lightly.
Your style of writing and descriptive powers brought this sad and poignant story that is sadly all too real.
I am looking forward to your next book with great anticipation.
with best wishes
The emotion throughout the journey which unfolded moved me to tears. I read some paragraphs over and over to absorb the moment. I hear a lot of people’s stories being a psychotherapist.. this one reached in and touched my soul as much as someone’s real story. I really look forward to reading your next book.
This book makes me want to look into working with asylum seekers… if only to hear their stories to let them know that they are not alone.
Thanks for your reply Chris, I’ve written to you personally to explain my comments which were compiled in a somewhat emotive state. I apologise if they have been seen as unintentionally provocative.
I can’t emphasise enough how hugely important it is to express the plight of asylum seekers and refugees who are massively misconstrued in the media. Hopefully your readers will look further into their treatment and experiences in the UK via the links you have provided. It’s really encouraging that people have been inspired to do this and look into working with asylum seekers through your work (there are ‘goodies’ out there but there can never be enough).
Kasia, thank you for this comment and also for your personal email, which was very moving. I am certain that there are some very good people working in the UK immigration system (in addition, I feel I must add, to some people who ought to be trying harder). I didn’t think your original comments on this page were out of line at all, and I’d like to apologise in my turn if I replied to them in a heavy-handed way. I can be a bore sometimes. I think it’s absolutely right, and also brave of you, to challenge me on the aspects of the novel that concern you. I think this sort of dialogue strengthens traditions that we both believe in. I’m learning about this as I go along, and I’m grateful to you for improving my understanding. Very best wishes to you.
The Other Hand, if just 1 refugee is saved as a consequence of your writing….well you’ll have to write a sequel now. You invited me into a story but it became & is real…I feel so powerless! More reading & to find a concrete way to help, that’s your legacy to me. I don’t want to lose the feelings that your book allowed to surface. It’s too easy to say it’s a novel, it isn’t. You tasted the whole, you wrote about it all with the most human face, so please keep this fire ignited. Sequel please….I need to know what happened to all the players. By the way, you wrote brilliantly & I believed you. Well done.
I too enjoyed the book imensely and would like to spend more time getting to know Little Bee, Batman and Sarah better. I’m sure they all have a life now outside the novel (Udo has somehow been set free and is now a trainee journalist in Abuja, Sarah has ditched the loathsome Lawrence and Batman is .. well, Batman.)
But… what’s the alternative to detention and deportation. Can we really have an open door policy? Can we sift the “deserving” from the opportunist from the terrorist without locking them all up while we try and verify a story hidden deep beneath the surface in a hostile country? How can we expect the wardens/jailers to show compassion when it’s “just a job, like plumbing”
The “refugee problem” isn’t a treatable disease, it’s a symptom. We can improve our paliative care, of course we can, but the root cause lies in the greed for power and money that we see everywhere. Mugabe follows Amin, oil follows slavery, Tibet follows Palestine. From Russia to Brazil, the “haves” protect what they have and lust for more, and the “have nots” die.
I’ve now depressed myself so much, I’ll have to go and reread the first chapter of “the other hand” to warm myself in Little Bees’s sunshine.
Thanks for a great novel, Chris.
Dear Chris
I read your first book a couple of years ago and I thought it was a very visceral… I had to read parts of it with one eye closed and I still have the occasional “flashback” .This said it also made me laugh so much!
When I saw that you had written another book I snapped it off the shelf and devoured it in a day being quite unable to saviour it like some of your other readers. I knew it was going to be brilliant even before I started reading the first page and I was not disappointed. I don’t know how you feel about me saying this but I think both books would make excellent films as they are so visual and the characters are so well drawn that they do very much live on in our imagination. I know it wouldn’t be the same but a popular film that gets across to the masses and changes hearts and minds is very much needed right now.
I also want to say that I very much appreciated your ability to articulate traumatic events from the inside and little Bee’s obsession with finding ways to end her life everywhere she went is, I think, surprisingly common but hardly ever discussed.
I am working with my own “little Bee” who is many years older and no less charming. She was very severely traumatised by what happened to her in her own country of origin and also I am sorry to say over here in detention. She also almost succeeded in hanging herself whilst in detention and is still a suicide risk today several years after she was granted asylum.
The work we do together is very mundane and ordinary – paying bills, negotiating with people in authority, being there to help her negotiate the rough terrain of recovery. What a lot of people don’t know is that it can often be even more difficult once the real danger has passed the memories begin to resurface and it hurts so much that they wish they had died. It’s also the grinding bureaucracy that’s bad enough for someone who isn’t a refugee but a bloody nightmare when you have language and cultural barriers and discrimination and trauma on top. So if you are moved to want to help then please do because there are so many people who need a friend, an advocate and mentor. It can and does make such a difference one life at a time.
Thank you Chris for being so clever and funny and eloquent and thanks to Batman just for being such great inspiration!
Dear Chris Cleave,
I vcolunteer at my church’s bookstore and during a recent stint your book , Little Bee”, was on display. I was instantly attracted the cover, epsecially the title. During a lull I was able to read the first thirty pages and I was hooked. I eventually devoured the book and will read a second time more slowly. The character of Little Bee touched my deeply. For her age she was very wise and I thought of her as an old soul. I agonized with Sarah, sympathized with Andrew and did not like Lawrence very much. Little Charlie stole my heart and his character added so much to your story. I will recommend your book to my book club and all my reader friends. Thank you for sharing your incredible gift with us, your readers. You’ve gained a new fan.
Brigitte Grunwald Moore
St. Petersburg, Florida