Little Bee by Chris Cleave

Ok, I’ll warn you up front, I don’t usually review books I don’t like unless they were provided by the publisher for review. This book was not provided by the publisher, I bought it, but my feelings about it are so strong, I can’t avoid reviewing it.

First of all, here’s what it says on the back cover:

“We don’t want to tell you what happens in this book. It is a truly special story and we don’t want to spoil it. Nevertheless, you need to know enough to buy it, so we will just say this:

This is the story of two women, Their lives collide on fateful day, and one of them has to make a terrible choice, the kind of choice we hope you never have to face. Two years later, they meet again-the story starts there…

Once you have read it, you’ll want to tell your friends about it. When you do, please don’t tell them what happens. The magic is in how the story unfolds.”

If I hadn’t read tons of book reviews recommending this book, after reading that summary, I would never have bought it. It makes me feel like the publisher is telling me that I’m not capable of knowing what the books about and deciding for myself if I want to read it. It kind of feels like they are saying, “Just shut up and read it, it’s good for you.” It also sets the reader up for great disappointment. Reading a summary like that makes me think that this book is going to change me life, which it most decidedly didn’t. That summary set me on edge right off the bat.

So for those of you that are capable of making your own decisions about what you will read, here’s my summary:

The book begins when Little Bee, a Nigerian refugee, who has been held in an immigration detention centre for two years, is released. She has a driver’s licence with her that she obtained two years ago on a beach in Nigeria. She makes her way to the address on the licence and knocks on the door. The woman who answers the door is Sarah O’Rourke, the second narrator of the novel. It is the morning of her husband’s funeral, who had hung himself only a few days previous after receiving a call from Little Bee. Little Bee, Sarah, and her husband, met on a beach in Nigeria in an encounter with some local terrorists. The story is just about Little Bee and Sarah helping each other heal from the terrible things that have happened to them.

I really felt like the book had potential but I had a hard time identifying with any of the characters. None of them were likable or really all that believable. It could be that the author was a man and both of his narrators were female. (I never understand why authors do that, although sometimes it works.) The story didn’t flow well either. And it just felt so contrived.

But I could have gotten past all of that if not for the ending. (WARNING: There are going to be spoilers here. I can’t explain what made me hate the book without talking about what happens in the end. It’s not really all that surprising though.) At the end of the novel, Little Bee gets deported. She had been living in England illegally and the authorities discover her. Sarah decides to follow her back to try and help her. Little Bee knows that the minute she gets off that plane she will be killed but with Sarah with her she is safe. (I don’t really understand why this is true but whatever.) The thing that bothered me is that Sarah brings her 4-year-old son with her to Nigeria, to this country where the terrible thing happened to her. The terrible thing that caused her husband to take his own life. She takes her 4-year-old child back to the country that she and her husband had agreed it was a mistake to visit the first time. At first, she stays in a safer part of the country in a hotel, but then she does the ultimate in stupidity and takes her son and Little Bee back to the beach where the terrible thing happened. And guess what? Her 4-year-old son gets shot at on that same beach and it is 100% because his mother was so selfish and stupid that she put him in a such a dangerous situation. I know these kind of things happen all the time to children but no mother I know would purposely put their child in danger like that, for any reason. I was so disgusted and enraged by that particular plot twist. I’m not sure where the author was trying to go with that but it was awful. And that is what I hate this book and will probably not recommend it to anyone.

Left Neglected by Lisa Genova

After reading Still Alice (Genova’s first novel) for book club last April, I was pretty excited when I was contacted by the publisher and offered a review copy of Left Neglected.

Sarah Nickerson, mother to three, has a high stress life and she loves it.  She spends most of her spare time working at her extremely demanding job, even her commute.  One morning, while multitasking in the car her attention is turned from the road for just a second and she crashes.  The accident leaves her with a condition called Left Neglect as a result of an injury to the right side of her brain.  Sarah no longer perceives information from the left.  She is also unaware of her left side.  She knows she has a left side but she just can’t find it.  And for the most part she isn’t even aware of her missing left side.  The rest of the story is about her struggle to rehabilitate her brain and basically her life.

I have to admit, the book started out slow and I didn’t love the writing style but it grew on me and the story definitely picked up after the accident.  I think partly the reason I didn’t like the book at the beginning is because I just didn’t understand her lifestyle.  She worked so much and spent so much time stressing about her job and I just couldn’t relate to that.  (I used to work as a high school science teacher and with two kids that was too much for me so I quit. Sarah did have a full time nanny but still.)  Anyway, after the accident, Sarah was forced to give all that up and rely on her family and therapists to her her get dressed and walk down a short hallway – a huge change for her.  Her estranged mother shows up out of nowhere and insists on helping Sarah and ends up becoming a huge part of her life.  I really liked that part of the book.  I know there are lots of people out there that don’t talk with their mothers but my mom is one of my best friends and it made me happy that Sarah was able to reconnect with her mother.

I liked the characters in this book, they were all so real.  There were times when I thought Sarah’s husband, Bob,  was being kind of a jerk and it bothered me, but then I realized that that was probably pretty realistic.  He actually was a really great guy and dealt with the huge change to his life quite well.  Sarah herself was also a good character.  For the most part she was pretty determined to overcome her condition but she got discouraged and cried just like most people would. But she was always able to get herself back on track, usually with the help of her mother.

It was also interesting to read about her recovery.  This is a little spoiler but she doesn’t ever fully recover by the end of the book. She is able to come to terms with it and make a new life for herself.  I like that although at the end she wasn’t back to normal, she was happy with where she was and what she was doing with herself and her family.

Probably the most interesting thing about this novel was reading about Left Neglect.  I’d never heard of this condition before (although I believe my great-grandmother may have had it after she had a stroke when I was much younger).  I can’t imagine what it must be like to live life without left.  And to not even be aware that it’s missing until you try to walk or something.  That’s what I like about Genova’s books.  She tells a good story but she also opens up my eyes to a condition that I’d never really thought about too much before (or even heard of).

I do have one tiny little complaint though.  I really don’t like Genova’s writing style.  It’s not bad, it’s just not for me.  It kind of feels more like she’s writing a report or something rather than a novel.  But it wasn’t cold or unemotional just maybe a little too technical feeling.  Anyway, I got used to it and I liked the book and I will definitely read another one if she writes one!

Ape House by Sara Gruen

Read for: Canadian Book Challenge 4

John Thigpen, a journalist, is fresh off a visit to the Great Ape Language Lab when he hears that the lab has been bombed, one of the scientists seriously injured, and the apes sold off in secret.  Isabel Duncan, the injured scientist, has made this project her life’s work and considers the apes to be family.  When she is sufficiently recovered from her injuries she is devastated to find out about the disappearance of the apes.  She does everything she can to find out what has happened to them or who is responsible for the bombing but finds nothing, until she sees the ads for a new reality tv show.  All of the apes are being recorded and broadcast around the clock.  The television show becomes the latest big story and John Thigpen is sent to get the story.  Isabel also heads to the site of the taping to try and protect her apes and hopefully get them back.

I really enjoyed this book for the most part.  The main story was entertaining, thought provoking and well written.  What bothered me were the sub plots.  Actually just one sub plot in particular.  John and his wife were having some issues that seemed unrelated to the rest of the novel and detracted from the story.  Also, John got involved in some weirdness that came out of left field and didn’t work in the flow of the story.  He also befriended some strippers that lived in the hotel he was staying in and while I can see where Gruen was trying to go with that relationship it just didn’t seem realistic.

Other than those small details though, I loved the book.  My favourite was reading about the apes and their interaction with each other and the humans in the book.  It was so interesting.  In the Author’s Note at the end of the book Gruen says that she was able to meet with the apes at the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa and many of the portions of the book that dealt with the apes were based on that experience.   She also says that most of the ape-human interactions in the book are based on actual conversations with great apes.  This book and Half Brother by Kenneth Oppel (which I reviewed just last week) have educated me and made me very interested in learning more about our closest relatives in the animal kingdom.

The novel also got me thinking a lot more about animal testing.  This is something that I don’t normally think about but both Ape House and Half Brother are about the morality of using animals for testing drugs or in the entertainment industry.  My eyes were certainly opened when reading about the conditions that the animals are subjected to.  These issues are things I don’t know enough about to comment on but it’s definitely something I’d like to learn more about.

Overall, I enjoyed the book and it gave me a lot to think about.

Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda

Read for: Book club, Canadian Book Challenge

Kavita, a young Indian woman has given birth to two daughters.  After her husband took the first one and killed it, she was determined to save the second.  She manages to get to an orphanage in Mumbai where she leaves the baby before returning to her village.  Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Somer is coming to terms with her inability to conceive a child.  Somer’s husband (who is Indian himself) suggests they adopt a baby from India.  They travel to India and (surprise, surprise) adopt the girl Kavita left at the orphanage.

The story is told in short little chapters from the point of view of several of the characters.  This bothered me.  If the story had been told from the perspective of just the three women, I think it may have worked better.  Also, the chapters were so short, I didn’t have a lot of time to get involved in the story or get to know the characters very well.  It really broke up the flow of the novel.

Also, I kind of hated the characters.  Granted, they had some seriously emotionally troubling issues to deal with but I just found them to be kind of whiny and annoying.  Through most of the book I just wanted to smack Somer and tell her to “slap out of it.”  (Cougar Town, anyone?)  And Kavita, well she was just the stereotypical downtrodden woman.  And I’m not saying this isn’t realistic (how would I know, I grew up in Canada) but she just wasn’t likable, I felt no sympathy for her plight.  (Unlike women like Mariam in A Thousand Splendid Suns or Aminata in The Book of Negroes.)

I also found the book to be a little bit on the cheesy side.  I think it actually had a lot of potential but something about the writing just made it seem so movie of the week.  I can’t say exactly what made it feel this way but it was there.

Now I’ve made it sound like I hated the book.  I actually didn’t and to be honest I couldn’t put it down.  I really did enjoy the story and I think the characters made some important realizations and redeemed themselves in the end.  For a first novel, I think Gowda did a good job and I will be interested to see what she writes about next time.

Now, on a slightly unrelated note, I read this review on the Globe and Mail and I just have one small bone to pick.  The author of this review calls Secret Daughter chick-lit.  I know this has been a big issue in the literary world recently but I just have to add my two cents.  Why is it that just because a book is written by a woman, or for women it gets labelled chick-lit?  There are plenty of books out there written by women that are decidedly not chick-lit.  And, I’m not saying there is anything wrong with chick-lit.  I love myself some good chick-lit and there are some very talented writers that have devoted themselves to this genre.  (Nicolas Sparks, for instance…just kidding, he doesn’t write chick-lit — ha.  Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of Sophie Kinsella and Meg Cabot).  Anyway, this topic has been discussed to death in the book blogging world so I’m going to leave it at that, but seriously?  Notice how I’m not tagging this review chick-lit?

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

Read for: Book Club, Global Reading Challenge – Africa

Marion Stone, a siamese twin, was the son of an Indian nun and an English surgeon at a hospital in Ethiopia.  His mother died in childbirth and his father got scared and took off so Marion and his brother were raised by two Indian doctors who also worked at the hospital.  The story covers a fifty year span and a lot of stuff happens.  I can’t really say much more about the story without spoilers.  The story is about the relationship between the twins, the political history of Ethiopia and medicine.

The book started out a little slow.  It’s a long book and the first 100 or so pages could have been condensed a lot.   That’s about how long it took for the twins to be born but after that the book just took off and didn’t stop.  I loved the writing style in this book.  There were quite a few stories to be told and some flashbacks were necessary but instead of having the book jump all over the place like some do, Verghese just put the flashback in when it was pertinent and didn’t use it as a device to try and build suspense.  (I hate it when I’m reading a story and just when I start to get involved with the characters, the author drops the reader into another story. )

I also really liked reading about Ethiopia and the life they lived there.  I’ve always had a certain vision of Ethiopia and reading this book made me realize how wrong I’ve been.  It was also very interesting to read the experience of Marion when he first came to North America.  I’ve read lots of books about people coming to America but the way Verghese described it seemed so real.

I also liked the story.  It took an unexpected turn but it worked.  There was a lot of technical language (at least to me) but it never seemed overwhelming and it never took away from the story.  I look forward to reading more from Verghese.

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

In 1913, a little girl turns arrives in Australia from England on ship all alone .  She can’t remember her name or how she came to be on the ship.  The dockmaster takes the little girl in, gives her a name – Nell and raises her as his own.  When she is 21, he decides to let her know about her mysterious origins.  This knowledge changes her whole outlook and eventually she sets out to England to try and find out who she is and why nobody ever came to look for her.

The story is told from several different points of view, Eliza in the early 1900s, Nell mostly in the mid 70s and Cassandra mostly in 2005.  After Nell dies, Cassandra, her granddaughter, is left to try and solve the mystery of Nell’s parentage and her solo voyage to Australia.  Eliza is the author of a book of fairy tales that was one of the few things Nell had with her when she arrived in Australia.

The story had so many narrators and so many characters that it had the potential to become quite confusing but it didn’t.  It was a long story with lots of twists and turns and while it wasn’t a book I just HAD to read, it was still very captivating and enjoyable to read.  It moved slowly but not in a bad way.  It was a very comfortable read.  It’s the kind of book you like to curl up with on a rainy day.  It reminded me a lot of The Thirteenth Tale by Dianne Setterfield.

It is a very long book but it didn’t feel like it was too long.  Sometimes books like this that have lots of little ends to tie up tend to wrap everything up at the end too quickly and it feels like the author was rushing to meet a deadline or something.  Not this book – the pace was nice and even throughout the book and it had great flow (even though it was told through so many characters.)  I really enjoyed this book and I can’t wait to read more of Morton’s novels.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

I know most people have already read this book or at least know what it’s about but I’m going to summarize it anyway.  The story is told in three voices, a white woman, young and idealistic and two black maids.  The white woman, Skeeter, has just graduated from university and would like to be a writer.  The story takes place in Jackson, Mississippi in the mid-sixties, an extremely volatile time and place in white-black relations.  Skeeter has an idea to write a book about the relationships between white women and their black maids – the help.  Aibileen and Minny, two black maids are persuaded to help her with the book.  At a time when black men are being beaten just for using a white bathroom, being involved in this project is extremely dangerous and all three women are taking a huge risk.

I listened to about the first three-quarters of the book on audiobook and read the last bit from the book.  I have no complaints about the audiobook but I don’t have as much time to listen to books as I do to actually read them and I really wanted to find out what happened so I just picked up the book.

The audiobook was amazing.  There were three different readers, one for each woman, and they were all so good.  I loved the accents and the dialect and I actually felt like I was right there sitting across the table from them telling me their story.  I might actually have to go back and listen to those last few chapters because I found it kind of disappointing to read after the listening.  It made the story richer and more real to be able to hear those voices.

As for the book, I loved it.  It was funny, and sweet and poignant.  I’ve never experienced racism and it really bothers me that it even exists.  Books like this are so important because I think we need constant reminders about how hurtful and wrong it is so we can hopefully prevent it from happening.

I will definitely read this book again and I would recommend it to anyone.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson

I can’t really do a summary without any spoilers for the previous two books so I’ll just say that this picks up just where The Girl Who Played with Fire left off.  And it’s more of the same intense story.

I still think the first one of the three was the best but this one (and the second one) weren’t any slouch either.  After finishing this one, I wanted to go right back to the beginning and read all three again.  I just loved that this trilogy was just go, go, go.  From the first page of the first book to the last page of the last book.

The only complaint I had with this (and the second book) was that if you haven’t just read the previous book (and I hadn’t) you’re going to be a little bit confused.  Larsson just has so many characters that it’s almost impossible to keep track of them.  It’s not that big of a deal because he does a pretty good job of bringing you up to speed about what happened in the previous books (without if being boring and redundant if you have just finished the previous books.)  Also, I found that even though I couldn’t totally remember who was who, it didn’t really matter.  As long as I remembered, good cop or bad cop (and even if I didn’t – it became pretty obvious very quickly) I was okay.

I think what sets this book apart from others like it is the fantastic story-telling.  Larsson sure knew how to weave a tale.  And weave he did.  There were so many different things going on that all had to come together in the end and make sense and they did!  Just like this others, I couldn’t put this one down but when I had to, I wasn’t completely lost when I was able to get back to it.  Sometimes I find books like this with so much going on are hard to follow but that wasn’t the case with this one.  I’m just sad that I won’t be able to read more from Larsson.

Promises to Keep by Jane Green

(This book is called The Love Verb in the UK and I actually think that title works much better for the book.)

The book is about a group of friends and family that are happily living their lives when they are devastated with the news that one of their group is dying of cancer.  It’s the story of how they come together to deal with the illness and imminent death of a close friend.

I didn’t really like this book.  First off, I was expecting it to be light hearted chick lit and obviously it wasn’t.  It was a lot heavier and emotional than I was expecting.  (Which isn’t really a flaw in the book but still colours how I feel about it in the long run.  It may be a marketing flaw but it was probably just a mistake on my part.)  Second, I found that the story took a really long time getting started.  Over half the book was character development and setting the stage for the real story to start.  I think I would have appreciated the book more if there was more story after the diagnosis.  This is what the book really should have been about (and I think is what it’s supposed to be about) but this part of the story just isn’t developed enough for me.  Third, I wasn’t a huge fan of the writing.  It wasn’t really bad, but it wasn’t great either.  And fourth, there were recipes between each chapter and while they weren’t really distracting or anything, I just didn’t really get what the point of them was.  One of the characters was a chef and really loved cooking and if she had been more of the main character it might have worked better.

I didn’t totally hate the book though.  It definitely pulled at my heart strings.  The dying character has two young children and I found myself just sick at the thought of dying and leaving my own children without a mother.  I really think the story had potential because it’s such a real story, such a familiar story.

I’ve heard tons about Chabon and this week at the library I just happened to see this book and picked it up.   I’m not sure how I feel about it though.  I kind of feel like this book had multiple personalities or something.

First of all, my summary.  Kavalier and Clay are cousins living in New York City.  Josef Kavalier has newly escaped from Prague where he had to smuggle himself out of the country.  (He’s Jewish and it’s 1939.)  His cousin Sammy Clay happens to see some of his drawings and immediately decides that they are going to draw/write a comic book together.  And that’s pretty much what it’s about.

I loved the first half of this book.  The imagery was amazing.  I could see the pages they were drawing and I felt totally immersed in the comic book world or superheros and secret identities.  It was so fun!  And the story was entertaining and flowing well.  But then something happened.  The whole story changed.  And I just realized something as I was typing that sentence…  The world changed (and with it the comic book world) and that’s when the whole feel of the story changed too.  So, although I still didn’t like it after that, I guess I can respect what he did and why.  It makes so much sense now!

Anyway, the story was really long and although I enjoyed it, it wasn’t a book that I couldn’t put down.  I sometimes even had to make myself pick it up again.  I felt that it was almost a tedious read at times.  (The book is over 600 pages of tiny print – there’s a lot of material there!)  And the ending was kind of disappointing.  The way the story was told I was expecting a nice tidy ending to bring everything together but it wasn’t that kind of ending.  And although I can enjoy a book like that, I just wasn’t expecting it here and it kind of threw me off.  The whole book I got the sense that something big was going to happen at the end and then nothing did.  I’m not sure what gave me this idea and I think I would have enjoyed the book more if I hadn’t been expecting some big ending.

I definitely will try reading another book by Chabon because I loved the writing.  And I would recommend this book but just with a warning about the kind of book it actually is!