Chris Cleave Ebook Boxed Set (39 page)

1. Leslie M., Saint Jacob, IL

I definitely have a question. When our book club discussed this book, we all had different views on what happened to Little Bee in the end. There was much discussion over the ending. Does Little Bee die? Does she take her own life? Or, did “the men” take it? Or, as one reader felt, does Sarah have enough sway to save Little Bee in the end? There were some strong opinions. I didn’t realize how ambiguous the outcome actually was until we spoke about it and I reread the last two pages. So, Chris Cleave, please give us some insight into just what did happen to our Little Bee.

Thank you for discussing the novel in your book club, Leslie. I feel very honored that you would take the time to think about my story so carefully. In answer to your question about the ending, I’m afraid I can’t say whether Little Bee lives or dies. That’s not me being stubborn-it’s just because I honestly don’t know. I think both outcomes are equally plausible. I wanted to leave the story open-ended. When I write a novel I like to do a lot of research and use that to open a door into a world that the reader might enjoy visiting. I don’t necessarily want to close that door again and say: “Move along now please, the action’s over, there’s nothing else to see here.” I’m always working to write a story where the characters are big enough to stay with me-and hopefully to stay with the reader-after the scenes of the book have finished. This is the transcendent moment I’m aiming for-and I don’t know if I ever achieve it-where the character passes from my mind to the reader’s mind, and the reader can negotiate with the character concerning what happens next. I was talking with a reader once who said that my novels tended to leave her with “a stone in [her] shoe,” and I suppose that might be the effect I’m aiming for. Not that I want the stone to be uncomfortable for you, mind. Just that I want the character to stay with you, and I don’t think that happens by tying off the ending neatly.

2. Lei Lani De Santiago, Austin, TX

I would like to ask Mr. Cleave why he felt it was important for the characters to be so different from each other to reflect the key message of his story. Wouldn’t it have been possible for Little Bee to find comfort and help from a fellow detainee rather than seek help from Sarah? Why the focus on the differences of the two?

I agree with you, Lei Lani, that it would have been a good way to tell the story, to follow Little Bee’s friendship with a fellow detainee. Indeed, as you can probably tell from the first few chapters of the novel, I was very interested in her relationship with Yevette, a refugee from Jamaica. As I went through successive drafts of the novel, though, I began to realize that if I wanted to tell the story of a refugee, then that would actually be two stories: that of the refugee herself, and that of the culture in which she seeks sanctuary. I realized that I needed an insider’s voice to tell each of those stories; hence the decision to make Sarah a major character and Yevette a minor one in the final balance of the novel. Also, I wanted to explore how much Sarah and Little Bee had in common, and this was a more interesting and counter-intuitive discovery when the two characters, on the face of it, shared very little. I liked the contrast between them, which I think might be best illustrated by the passage where Little Bee says: “Little girls in your country, they hide in the gap between the washing machine and the refrigerator and they make believe they are in the jungle, with green snakes and monkeys all around them. Me and my sister, we used to hide in a gap in the jungle, with green snakes and monkeys all around us, and make believe that we had a washing machine and a refrigerator.” And then I liked the way that these two very different characters could come together, in the cause of their common humanity.

3. Carol Levy, Woodbury, NY

How did you get the inspiration to write this story? It seems like a story that would be written by a woman.

Thanks Carol. I was inspired to write the novel by the real-life story of Manuel Bravo, a refugee from Angola. 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."

In response to your comment that the novel seems like one that would have been written by a woman-well, I’m sure it could have been. I’m not so sure there’s all that much difference between male and female writers once they achieve a certain technical level. The further you go as a writer, the less difference it should make what body you happen to be inhabiting-either in real life, or in the life of your novel. I think the work is to imagine yourself into the psyche of any human being, of any gender, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, and so on. It takes sustained and quiet concentration, but you get to the point where you can write these characters and put them in the service of your theme.

4. Alison K., Northampton, MA

Throughout the book, Little Bee was alert to her surroundings and imagined how she would kill herself, should the men come. At the end of the book, when the men finally came for Little Bee on the beach, why didn’t she try to kill herself?

Thanks, Alison. I think by the end of the novel she’d become much stronger. She’d gone through that post-traumatic stage characterized by persistent thoughts of suicide, and she’d come out at the other end as a tougher cookie. I was very interested to explore this idea that suicidal thoughts might be part of a process in which she took back control of her destiny. In choosing not to succumb to the suicidal impulse, she became the master of her situation again. In her own words, she had “killed herself back to life."

5. Amy Neral, Brookfield, OH

I was so emotionally attached to your book that when her husband wouldn’t cut off his finger to save the girls, I yelled at my husband and smacked him with the book-gently-but he now asks me if I am reading “a book like the Bee one” before he answers any “if we were...would you...” questions. What motivated you when writing that specific part of the book?

Amy, my apologies to you and your husband for being the indirect cause of this stark incident of domestic violence that sullied what would otherwise seem to be a good-humored marriage. I’m amused that he asks you if you’re reading “a book like the Bee one,” because my wife tends to ask me if I’m writing a book like the Bee one. (She argues that I must be disturbed on some level to write the more graphic scenes, while I tend to protest that I am actually quite a calm person.) The truth is that the finger-chopping scene came to me fully formed in a dream after I’d been working on drafts of the novel for a while, and I adapted the dream to fit my theme. I needed a concrete illustration of one of the abstract philosophical questions that the book explores-namely, how much of our comfortable lives should we give up in order to help those who have much less than we do? And what could be more concrete than a question that turns into a book that is then used to smack a significant other? Awesome.

6. Telika Howard, Memphis, TN

How did you find that right person to get your writing noticed? How did you get your foot in the door and how long did it take?

I don’t think there’s only one door, and if there was I wouldn’t be the type to stick my foot in it. It’s more about creating new doors onto rooms no one knew existed. The publishing industry is less of a fortress than it is commonly believed to be. In my experience it’s full of very creative people who are constantly on the lookout for books they love. When you come up with something good, they’re more likely to support you than slam the door. So from a writer’s point of view, it’s best just to do your own thing and when you’re happy with it, send it out to all the usual suspects. I don’t think there’s a magic “right person.” I like to think about JK Rowling, who worked away on her own for goodness knows how long to create Harry Potter’s world. No one was waiting on a seven-book wizarding epic. She just decided that it would be thus, and it was. That’s probably how I approach writing. I just believe that if I’m passionately interested in a story, then since I’m not so different from the next person, surely they’ll be into it too. So you just do your best work and let it speak for itself. Then you need to have a bit of good luck. I’ve been very lucky to have agents and publishers who’ve believed in me when I was down as well as when I was up. The person who will publish your second novel after the first one didn’t sell-that’s the person you need, and they’re harder to come by than that first person who gets excited by your first book.

7. Enid Portnoy, Rockville, MD

Did you find yourself siding with any one character while writing the book?

Good question, Enid. At first I hated Sarah and loved Little Bee, so that Sarah was something of a pantomime villain and Little Bee was a complete innocent. As I worked through the drafts, I hope both of them became more nuanced. Now 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. 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 bad 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. If I could write the book again now, three years on, I’d probably give Sarah some more lighthearted episodes, and I’d probably give Little Bee a meaner streak.

8. Enid Portnoy, Rockville, MD

How political did you intend to make this story? Do you feel that we need to do a better job adapting and accepting people of other cultures? Which of the characters do you think are most and least successful in doing this?

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. To the extent that the novel makes that statement, I think it’s a political book.

In answer to your question, Enid, about which of the characters are most and least successful in getting that idea across, I’d have to say that the character of Charlie (aka Batman) is the novel’s secret weapon. I think people tend to like him, and he provides a way into the story for some readers who might otherwise have been uncomfortable with confronting the more political aspects of the book.