Little Bee by Chris Cleave

Narrated by Anne Flosnik.
Audiobook published by Tantor Media, Inc., 2009.
Formats available: print, ebook, MP3 audiobook, CD audiobook.

Story:
Reading:

Before reading Little Bee, my experiences with Nigeria had been limited to the novels of Chinua Achebe and the "Nigerian prince" who likes to spam my email every so often by asking me to send him money. Little Bee took me to Nigeria and reminded me that the world is full of things that I know nothing about.

We meet Little Bee, our eponymous protagonist, in the immigration detention center she has found herself in after attempting to illegally immigrate to the UK. By twist of fate she is released along with three other women though she has no papers and is in the country illegally. She has no one to turn to except a couple, Sarah and Andrew, who she met briefly on a beach in Nigeria two years before. Although she does not know Sarah and Andrew, she feels a bond with them as a result of the traumatic experience they shared on the beach.

Ultimately this story is about how much of ourselves we're willing to give others. What do we give and how much do we keep back? This book is not a light-hearted read but it is a powerful one. Although I can't say that I "loved" it, I do highly recommend it. I give the story 4 out of 5 stars partly because I don't feel like Chris Cleave gets the voice of 4-year-old Charlie, Sarah and Andrew's son, quite right. If you're not the mother of a 4-year-old boy (as I happen to be) you probably won't notice. I also felt that the book ended rather abruptly. It left me feeling as if I'd missed something important.

I do especially recommend the audiobook. Anne Flosnik does a stunning job bringing the voice of Little Bee to life. I can't give her 5 stars simply because she struggled with Andrew's Irish accent and has trouble at times transitioning between Little Bee's Nigerian accent and Sarah's British one.

On the whole I thought this was a brilliant book read very, very well.

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Narrated by Bernadette Dunne, Marc Bramhall, and Katie MacNichol.
Audiobook published by Books on Tape, Inc. 2009.
Formats available: print, ebook, MP3 audiobook, CD audiobook.

Story:
Reading:

I'm stunned by Margaret Atwood's ability to produce one great novel after another. This is an intreaguing story, well-told. It's classic Margaret Atwood: who survives in a post-apocalyptic future and how? The story takes a look at the world she created in Oryx and Crake from another point of view, that of the members of the fringe religious and environmentalist group called God's Gardeners. Toby, Ren, and Adam One tell of the events that led up to what The Gardeners call the "waterless flood," a plague that has wiped out the majority of human life on Earth.

Toby joined The Gardeners to escape a homicidal stalker. While she doesn't embrace all of their religious tenets, she does embrace their preparations for the waterless flood. She learns survival skills, the medicinal uses of plants, gardening, and hunting, all of which serve her well in the aftermath of the plague.

Ren came to The Gardeners as a child when her mother left her father to run off with Zeb, a Gardener. When her mother returns to her father in the HelthWyzer Compound, Ren feels unmoored and eventually ends up as a sex worker at a high-end brothel. She survives the flood because she is locked in a decontamination zone when the plague hits.

Adam One joins the story in the form of his sermons to his Gardener community by which we come to understand The Gardener's theology.

Three narrators bring the voices of Toby, Ren, and Adam One to life. The multi-voiced performance worked very well for this book. What didn't work as well for me is the fact that the novel skips around quite a bit in time. This works better in print where you can revisit chapters if you lose a sense of the order of events. Because this audiobooks takes 14 hours to listen to, it was difficult to keep straight the events of the story as we jumped forward and backward in time over the two weeks it took me to listen to it. The Gardener hymns written for the book are an interesting idea but seemed a drag on the pace of the reading. I found myself skipping over them to get back to the story, especially at the end when the story becomes highly suspenseful.

Overall I thought this was an excellent story and very well presented by the narrators. Highly recommended to Atwood enthusiasts.

Ratings System

Here's how I think about audiobooks: 1. did I like the story? and 2. did the narration enhance my experience of the story? A great audiobook is one that takes a wonderful, powerful story and adds the special spark of life that you get when you read a book aloud. With this in mind, I've decided to give each book two ratings, one for the story and one for the quality of the audio production.

The Story:

Soul food

I would definitely read it again

Worth reading

If I had nothing else to read

I'd rather read the phone book

The Reading:

How did I live before hearing this?

Like music to my ears

Worth a listen

This narrator should take up yodeling

I'd rather listen to nails on a chalkboard