February book: The Other Hand, by Chris Cleave

chosen by Kim

Book Description:

The Other Hand is narrated alternately between Sarah, suburban mother and magazine editor, and 'Little Bee', a Nigerian girl seeking asylum, who speaks Queen's English learnt from broadsheet opinion columns and a Collins Gem, with snatches of her native language.

The novel is built around a sickening scene on the Nigerian beach where Sarah and her husband, Andrew, briefly met Little Bee. These three characters cannot 'move on', physically or emotionally, after their experience there.

Despite the beach scene and the depiction of the plight of refugees, hope for new beginnings is at the story's heart - as Little Bee remarks, 'a sad story means, this storyteller is alive'.

What we discussed about the book:

We used a lot of Oprah's reading questions for The Other Hand, which made us talk about ourselves more than actually talking about the book!

For example, Little Bee tells the reader "We must see all scars as beauty...because a scar means, I survived" (p9).  We discussed what emotional or physical scars we have and whether we've come to embrace any of them.

We talked about whether we trusted one woman's voice over the other and decided Little Bee was a more likeable character.  We couldn't understand Sarah liking Lawrence, with whom she had an affair.

We briefly discussed when do you decide to put yourself first and when to offer charity.  Is one human life ever more valuable than another?  And then, like Little Bee and her sister Kindness, we chose new names for our group members, based on their characteristics.

Jack - Generous Jack, Rachael - Giving go-getter, Sharon - Loyal tiger, Pip - Calm strength, Pen - Resilient lady, Alana - Loyal rock, Bree - Generous thinker, Kim - Gracefully capable.

Who we would cast in the movie version of the book:

• Sarah - Kate Winslet
  
• Little Bee - a young Thandie Newton
  
• Andrew - Coling Firth
  
• Lawrence - Ralph Fiennes
  
• Batman - ??
  

And then we were sidetracked into:

• What a great movie Avatar is.
  
• Bullying - who of us was bullied and how we coped with it.
  
• The escalation of random violence we are reading about in the news

And in other news:

We got an update on how Alana, Caryn and Zachary are going.

Ratings 

Ratings average: 7.9

Ratings range: 7 to 8.5