Little Bee was overall a great book. It was well written, the characters were all developed with issues that you could read into as much or as little as you wanted (even the minor characters). But I still have an immense issue with the ending of this book. I understand that not everyone gets a happy ending...but this was so much of a stretch that I couldn’t get a handle on it.
Everything was going so smoothly that the ending was just such a shock...but it all had a delayed reaction. Little Bee herself was seeking out the positive despite her situation and almost certain death after being captured. The whole scene shifted focus from the actual conflict to Charlie who Little Bee basically gave her life to save (I’m assuming that she would have been killed knowing what happened to her sister when they were first captured). With Little Bee focusing on Charlie running free with all of the other children it was hard to even realize that she was being detained at the time.
The distraction itself was so stunning that I was still in the world of the book and what had happened to the character that I had grown so attached to was in the back of my mind. I was so proud of Charlie, taking off his Batman suit that I could hardly be sad for Little Bee until after I closed the book.
Of course much more happened before I got to the end of the book, but I was so rattled by the ending that so many of the steps taken to get to it are a blur. Just as they must have been for Little Bee, Charlie going missing, finding him, being interviewed by the police and attempting to run away, meeting Sarah and Charlie on her plane back to Nigeria. All a blur, important steps but so hard to remember when something so important and motion stopping happens, nothing else seems to matter. Even Little Bee’s imminent death.
No comments:
Post a Comment