Comments on: Chris Cleave: The Other Hand

By: Ellie

Ellie — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 05:52:37 +0000

Hi, I have just finished this book and am most disappointed. The blurb on the back said ‘Once you have read it , tell your friends. But don’t reveal the ending. The magic is in how it unfolds.” What’s to reveal?? I was left feeling flat and uninspired. I guess I must have missed something or I am just too practical for airy-fairy endings. Yes it was nice that the little native children were playing with this ‘never before seen’ little skinny white kid but the fact remained that Little Bee was being arrested and would probably be executed - or do I presume too much? I found the story quite touching in places, quite confronting in others, never “hilarious” and ultimately a let down. I guess it was too “realistic” for me (no happy ending) - I was looking for fiction or I would have read a non-fiction account of these types of harrowing stories - which I am sure there are many. I was left high and dry and thinking “but what actually happened to Little Bee?”.

By: Stewart

Stewart — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 12:41:27 +0000

I suppose all I can say, Katie, is that I envy your position: all those much better books and authors you’ve yet to discover. Enjoy!

By: Katie

Katie — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 12:31:50 +0000

I must say, that I have been deeply touched by this book, as a 2nd year English lit student, this is so far the best book I have come across, and I can’t imagine another changing that and will reccomend it to anyone who will listen - truly an amazing book! To Chris Cleave, thankyou
I’m now of to Waterstones to check out your other offerings.

By: Stewart

Stewart — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 11:32:26 +0000

I feel your pain, Mary. I wouldn’t worry about being unpopular when Wednesday comes around, as you may find that others share your thoughts. I would be surprised if others didn’t.

Based on this review of his other novel, Incendiary, it would seem that poorly implemented female narrators are his trademark.

By: Mary O'Malley

Mary O'Malley — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 20:52:15 +0000

I am force feeding mysself through this book for our book club. I find it so artificial, superficial and contrived that I can see I am going to be very unpopular next Wednesday. Little Bee - even the name grates- use of Queen’s English versus what the girls at home would say and think simply does not ring through. As for the beach scene, the grave scene, the farm scene, the dialogue throughout, nothing is authentic. Chris Cleave does not get the woman’s voice at all,- neither Sarah nor Bee.

By: The Other Hand by Chris Cleave: But on the other hand … « Vulpes Libris

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 05:25:06 +0000

[…] a book that will, sadly, do well when it absolutely does not deserve to) is an author who, as Stewart of the Booklit site says in the comments section of his review, can write well and poetically when he puts his mind to it, but who has no real notion of how to […]

By: Anne Brooke

Anne Brooke — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 07:55:51 +0000

Really?? What is wrong with Sceptre?? Why can’t books stand or fall on their own?? I hate it that it’s coming to this. It makes me very angry, though I’m not sure I can fully articulate why. Something is indeed rotten in the state of Denmark, at least in the literary world. Does everyone now think readers are stupid or something??

Sound of screaming from the shires …

==:O

Anne B

By: Stewart

Stewart — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 08:53:41 +0000

how I hated that blurb and the editor’s ridiculously patronising letter - arrgghh!!

Yes, it still rankles in my mind.

I saw recently that Sceptre are being quirky again, this time with David Benioff’s City Of Thieves. Paperbacks have a slip of paper sashed around saying, “We love this book so much we’ll give you TWO other great books for FREE if you don’t love it too.” The mistake here is that if they love the book so much and the reader doesn’t love it, then the two other ‘great’ books are perhaps as unlikely to be loved.

Cleave can write, if he puts his mind to it, but I think the editor needed to stop typing needless letters to the reader and do a little more firm editing for this one really to hit the mark …

I agree with this. He can use words well, it’s just that the characters felt unbelievable and, since it’s them I was following, it fell apart for me. I do think the editorial capacity should have been restricted to working with the prose rather than getting hooked into silly marketing gimmicks.

By: Anne Brooke

Anne Brooke — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 17:28:54 +0000

This is so very much what I thought of this novel (how I hated that blurb and the editor’s ridiculously patronising letter - arrgghh!! - if I hadn’t had to tackle this for my upcoming Vulpes Libris review, I would have put it down firmly and gone off muttering at that point …) that it was a delight to read this piece - so glad it wasn’t just me who felt those things!

Cleave can write, if he puts his mind to it, but I think the editor needed to stop typing needless letters to the reader and do a little more firm editing for this one really to hit the mark …

Anne B

By: Stewart

Stewart — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:01:34 +0000

Hi Chris, thanks for responding. I really appreciate it. Regarding the marketing, I felt it a bit much. That the book explicitly states it to be “extremely funny” puts a weight on its shoulders that a new book perhaps doesn’t need.

…you might want to take a deep breath next time you’re considering calling a writer “cynical”. To write that I make my protagonist speak the way she does in order “to avoid the trouble of crafting a believable voice” is a frankly silly claim to make of a text that uses sharply differentiated dialogue in multiple registers and dialects.

I never said you were cynical, but that I thought the device of Little Bee’s Queen’s English voice was. It was never intended to be some sort of by proxy statement. While it does “use sharply differentiated dialogue in multiple registers and dialects” I simply never found Little Bee’s voice believable. I do agree that to say “is a cynical device” rather than “seems a cynical device” is wrong, and I’ve changed this single word. Overall I find myself agreeing with with Tim Teeman in The Times, when he says “To really engage with it, you will have to love Sarah”, something I never felt I could.

All the best with the book and the forthcoming movie of Incendiary, Chris. I notice that The Other Hand will be published in the US as Little Bee: it makes me wonder if there will be changes to the narrative, notably those lines where she refers to the reader’s language as “your language”.