Nothing ruins a book like a bad ending

I am very particular about the way a book ends. It has nothing to do with whether the ending is happy or sad, uplifting or cynical, but whether it is natural to the story, whether it is believable in the context of the world created by the author, and whether it feels complete. Melville discussed this idea of completeness in our round blog on Incarceron-- whether a book is part of a series or not, the book should feel whole. Although not ALL answers have to be answered and every mystery explained, there should be enough development for the reader to feel as if the story said something. If an author finishes the book with “the wrap-up,” I feel a little disappointed that the characters do not have an interesting life beyond this one story, which deflates the character for me--they end up a little one-dimensional (this is a fault in much young adult fiction).  There is also the abrupt ending, which feels as if the book just sort of stops, leaving the reader wondering what the point was. Then, there is the WTF ending. The story is very interesting, but then the author doesn’t really know how to end it, so he or she writes a rather absurd climax that just tumbles into a conclusion, ending the book in a rush. This brings me to Little Bee.

First off, the first 75% of Little Bee was worth reading. Chris Cleave captures the characters’ voices and details the life of a girl refugee with compassion and thoughtfulness but without sentimentalizing her experience or satisfying white guilt with a perfect conclusion. The story is told from the point of view of Little Bee, a Nigerian refugee whose village was caught in the middle of an oil war, and Sarah, a white British woman who takes Bee in. The story’s shifting narrators remind the reader that what it means to suffer depends on one’s perspective.

The story begins by addressing a white, western audience in the same vein as A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid--not so much with Kincaid’s anger, but with an underlying dejected acceptance of how globalization works to destroy for the sake of a British pound (or dollar). Little Bee calls out this white “you” throughout the book’s entirety, again not necessarily to reprimand, but in an attempt to bridge the gap of difference (maybe to reprimand a little). However, at the same time, she also seems aware that there is no such bridge--our understanding of each other is essentially limited.

What is both startling and expected is the British people’s responses to Bee and other refugees. (The only likable British person is a little boy who won’t change out of a Batman costume.) Bee exposes the horrible mistreatment of those who seek refuge in the very country that is responsible for the violence they try to escape.  The book essentially seeks to point out the ignored racism of places like London that try to claim an acceptance of diversity. Western society has a very “hear no evil, see no evil” position concerning the state of refugees, and the author does not hold back on his depiction of our apathy and resignation to an evil world. Cleave continually points to and laments this modern cynicism about racism and corruption in Africa. 

I don’t really know if it matters that the author is a white male, but it might have something to do with his WTF ending. I usually try not to read with the image of the author in mind because the book’s characters are well-developed and the story is nonetheless interesting or truthful because of his color. However, the ending fizzles in such a way that I can’t help but wonder if it has to do with his underlying awareness of his own difference from a Nigerian refugee girl. Although mostly everything about Bee’s story--up until the end--is interesting and thought-provoking and important in the sense that, as a bestseller, the book has brought a usually ignored set of people to popular culture, the book’s terrible ending shifts the focus back to fiction. In other words, because the ending is so unnatural in the context of the story and so very incomplete, one feels it is only just a story after all, which, to me, undermines the book’s otherwise powerful message and Bee’s horrifying experience. The ending image of a naked blonde boy happily playing amongst the African children seems to be an unnatural sugary coating to an otherwise honest story.  

I end with some questions that I don’t seem to have an answer to: does the author’s race or color matter even if the story is about race and color? Is it something to be acknowledged? Or, does his bad ending speak more to his (in)ability as an author?