Little Bee

Recently I had the honour reading Chris Cleave’s “The Other Hand” and gosh I didn’t know I actually bought the same book with a different title until I was half way through the book! One night I was standing in front of my bookshelf, which is full of novels, textbooks, and folders, I suddenly found the name, “Chris Cleave” and soon realised that I had bought “The Other Hand” with another title, “Little Bee”, sigh. This is what happens when you keep buying books and the reading cannot keep up with the influx of newbies.

Anyway, my focal point of this entry is that “The Other Hand” is really a good read. It did give me chills down the spine in many parts of the novel. It’s also a sort of pathetic matter that dominating or mainstream society has its way of influencing many across the globe, in a way sometimes beyond our comprehension. The truth is: using our living standard or so-called philosophy to frame other cultures or people with diverse beliefs is not really fair or wise or even can be relatively dangerous.

The only thought I had after reading this novel was that we should never try to change our own values, the precious ones, deep inside our heart because there must be some wisdom embedded in one’s culture or tradition, which has been passed on for hundreds of years or even thousands of years…

I didn’t like the affair part in the story because it is too generic to me. As we read many best-selling books, this genre seems inevitable and perhaps it is one of the selling points in contemporary literature. However, I just thought it gave rise to the stereotype that British people fool around even though they are in wedlock. Oh well, who am I to judge? Thing is we should never hurt other people no matter what we do in life. Kudos to Little Bee! I saw weaknesses as a human being. I sensed that it’s really difficult giving up one’s own life for a stranger, and even if you do, you will probably gain nothing in return when the recipient has a chance paying back to what you have done for him or her. At the end of the day, that is life, isn’t it?