We have a full house, it seems. It's gratifying and exciting.
A
Big Welcome to all the new readers who joined us from places as distant as Sweden and Down Under, and old friends, as well. We are privileged to have one of our nonfiction DLs, Ella, here with us.
This folder was opened on
October 16, 2010 when
Little Bee was first proposed. Readers promptly expressed their interest, a qorum was reached quickly, and the discussion scheduled to begin on
January 2, 2011. All the posts are found here, only the header was changed to reflect background information, and to provide a reading schedule.
The back cover of the American edition carries this (somewhat unusual) request:
We don't want to tell you WHAT HAPPENS in this book.
It is a truly SPECIAL STORY and we don't want to spoil it.
NEVERTHELESS, you meed to know enough to buy it, so we will just say this:
This is the story of two women. Their lives collide one fateful day and one of them has to make a terrible choice, the kind of choice we hope you never have to face.
Two years later they meet again - the story starts there.
Once you have read it, you'll want to tell your friends about it. When you do, please don't tell them what happens. The magic is in how the story unfolds.
This request is the reason for our
omitting the preliminary questions that are the customary opening of our discussions. The book is told in
chapters in the voices of Little Bee and Sarah O'Rourke.
The suggested
reading schedule is more a schedule
for the discussion, because we are always free to read as much we we want ---
as long as we don't divulge it in the discussion too soon.
For
Sheila and others using electronic readers without page numbers.
Though I have not seen or held one of these devices, I feel reasonably certain that the digital version will show the text in precisely the same fashion - in successive
chapters - as the printed editions.
The first portion for discussion, to which we'll get tomorrow, comprises t
he first three chapters.
In my post # 82 on 12-30 I mentioned
some thoughts to ponder.
What are
your impressions of the adolescent Nigerian teenager who has nothing but hope, and about the self-assured publisher of an edgy women's magazine in
London ?
Does the author's method of telling the same story from the perspective of these two different women annoy, confuse, or help ? Were you impelled to read on ?
Steph, you are right, this is a different approach, and it may be scary - like all new things we've never tried before. But life does put us into position we did not imagine, and even so we must go on ...
