KEY POINTS:
THE OTHER HAND
Chris Cleave
Sceptre, $38.99
You might fairly expect a novel about a young female Nigerian refugee, whose entire village has been murdered due to the global greed for oil and who herself has the barest chance of surviving, to be depressing.
But the voice of Little Bee doesn't ask for pity - not even as she explains how, wherever she happens to be, she looks for the quickest way of killing herself, just in case "the men come again".
She tells of a desperate two years in a British detention centre and the lengths she goes to for survival in a voice that demands to be heard, but is too full of life to be a downer.
And that's the strength of Chris Cleave's writing. He tells a story about something most of us would prefer not to think about, but never falls back on cliches. He constantly seeks out original images to convey Bee's thoughts and perceptions as she tries to make some sense of the world.
This book is actually about two women: Bee, who has suffered a Third World horror, and magazine editor Sarah O'Rourke, who is going through a very First World crisis. Sarah's husband has hung himself and she's being forced to face up to the ways her own behaviour might have contributed to his problems.
Again, it all sounds depressing, but the quirkiness of Cleave's writing, particularly his portrait of Sarah's son Charlie, who is convinced he's Batman, imbues the story with a gentle humour that lightens the load. As Bee says: "If I could not smile I think my situation would be even more serious."
The paths of these two women cross by chance at a scene of horror on a Nigerian beach and, when Bee escapes the detention centre, it is to Sarah she flees, arriving on her doorstep on the day of her husband's funeral.
An unlikely friendship grows between these two women, both finding they need the other to have any sense of hope for the future.
Author Cleave spent his early childhood in Africa and, as a student, worked serving canteen meals in a detention centre for asylum seekers. Combine those experiences with what I imagine are his left-leaning politics - he's a columnist for the Guardian newspaper, after all - and you can see where this novel comes from.
But Cleave avoids being didactic. Instead he entertains us with Bee's wry take on British culture and pulls us along through all the tragedy with clever writing and characters who are neither wholly good nor bad, but always worth caring about.
To write with such beauty about such horror is an amazing achievement. This book is compelling and a constant surprise.
