The blurb on its dust jacket is short and starts, "We don't want to tell you too much about this book." Well it is hard to review a book without telling something about it, but discretion is required by any reviewer not to reveal the hub of the story, but merely taking some of the spokes of the story wheel to capture the interest of prospective readers.

Basically, the story is about two females, one an adult English woman, the other a 16-year-old Nigerian refugee, who turns up at her doorstep in her home in Kingston on Thames. They have met before, but under what circumstance is the hub of the tale and is not revealed until quite deep into the novel.

Cleave lets the story unfold in alternate voices, that of Sarah, the English woman and Little Bee. It is a device fairly frequently used now, but in this case works very well.

The book opens with Little Bee, a name she gave herself to make herself as inconspicuous as possible to those who wish her harm, telling the reader that "Most days I wish I was a British pound coin instead of an African girl. Everyone would be pleased to see me coming." She has good reason to make such a wish because she arrived on British soil after a treacherous journey that ended in a refugee detention center. Judging by its description, it is not a place of hope even though there are some provisions made for psychological counseling as many of the inmates are scarred from experiences that made them leave their homelands.

Cleave had personal experience of such a detention center when he worked there briefly as a casual laborer during his student days. The description of high walls and razor wire to keep the internees in leaves one a little chilled. As does Little Bee's own story of her stay there.

What separates Little Bee from the other inmates is her effort, mostly successful, to drop her Nigerian English and turn herself into sounding as English as the Queen herself. She had plenty of time doing so as her stay in this place of little hope lasted two years. Then suddenly, one day she and three other women find themselves released without any kind of preparation, waiting for a taxi to take them where they do not know. Only Little Bee has a destination in mind and reaches it by ending up on Sarah's doorstep.

The release scene is quite humorous at first, the comic relief provided by a very sassy Jamaican, Yevette. Cleave manages her accent well. Anyone living in Toronto will recognize it. It is heard on buses, streetcars and subways, and of course, it is familiar through winter vacations spent on the Island. But a dark moment arrives eventually, even in this humorous interlude.

Sarah and Little Bee meet on the day of the funeral of Andrew, Sarah's husband, father of four-year-old Charlie. There are only flashes of Andrew throughout the story, but we get to know that he wrote socially critical columns for an important British newspaper. We also gather from the snippets that Sarah reveals through inner thoughts and back flashes that he was the kind of Irishman who suffered from the Celtic national disease, melancholy, that needed to be drowned in drink during days of crisis.

It seems a somewhat nebulous coincidence for the two women to meet again after more than two years just as Sarah and Charlie are about to leave for Andrew's funeral. But, it also offers Sarah some comfort because Charlie takes well to Little Bee. This child is obsessed with Batman, refusing to take off his Batman suit and mask during the day, even in nursery school. To him the world is divided into goodies and baddies, the latter, of course, to be defeated by Batman.

The boy's various ticks are well described by Cleave, from his quivering lower lip to his childish speech pattern. Charlie reminds me of a cousin's young son, who had an obsession with Peter Pan in a very similar fashion. Charlie is one of the spokes in this tale, which serves as comic relief and also assists in the resolution of the story.

Sarah, originally from Surrey, is a fashion magazine editor. Cleave uses her origin to create a form of inside joke, which made me smile because obviously nothing has changed since my time in London many moons ago. For readers unfamiliar with prejudices expressed by Londoners living north of the Thames against those south of the river will just have to go with the flow, so to speak.

Sarah had hoped that her magazine would be of a more intellectually engaging type, but finds at a critical time in her life that to keep up sales, the stories must be of the same kind of dippy content found in similar periodicals. In an effort to upgrade stories she does what editors usually do not do, she decides to write a story herself. This leads her to Lawrence, a civil servant of the mediocre type with whom she starts an affair at a point as her marriage appears to disintegrate. Never mind that Lawrence is also married. Of course, Andrew finds out, leading him deeper into his melancholic depression until something else drips him up even more, hence the funeral.

Lawrence dislikes Little Bee. He does not want her in Sarah's life now that Andrew is gone. He feels compromised by this illegal refugee's presence and tries to get her to leave. Little Bee, though, in bee-like fashion has a sting that can harm him, and lets him know.

Just how this tale concludes and how the characters disentangle is for the reader to find out. There is just one scene I want to mention that appears near the hub of the story. It is a brief scene, but an important spoke in this wheel-like tale. In it a man, who appears only briefly in the story, walks into the sea on a Nigerian beach. It is a scene gently drawn by Cleave to reveal how evil can possess someone, who knows better, but lets it happen, nevertheless. And evil is very much present in this tale.