The Other Hand manages to be both funny and depressing. One moment, it is relating the antics of a four-year-old who believes himself to be Batman; the next, it is a searing look at the cruelty of human nature.

The narrative alternates between two women: Little Bee, a 16-year-old from a small Nigerian village, and Sarah, a 30-something English mother and editor of an edgy magazine, the kind which tries to address 'real life' issues but mostly sells for its sex tips.

What links the two women - and what begins the story - is a harrowing encounter on a Nigerian beach between them.

Sarah was on a holiday 'somewhere different' with her husband Andrew, a columnist.

Little Bee was fleeing the men who had just killed her father, mother and everyone in her village, so that their employers can lay claim to the oil well beneath the land.

The repercussions of this meeting shape most of the story and the moral dilemma it raises forms the thematic core of the book. The narrative, however, starts two years later. Little Bee, having stowed away on an English ship, is thrown into an Immigration Removal Centre - a prison in all but name. Upon her accidental release, she searches for the only people she knows in Britain.

This takes her to a bucolic London suburb where another tragedy awaits: Andrew, overwhelmed with guilt over their encounter on the beach, kills himself. As Sarah and Little Bee turn to each other for support, secrets and guilt continue to eat into their conscience.

The author received positive reviews for his first novel Incendiary (2005), written in the form of a letter to Osama bin Laden from a working-class woman after her husband and son are killed in the suicide bombing of a London stadium.

Unfortunately, sales were hurt by the macabre coincidence of its publication date: July 7, the day religious terrorists blew up three trains and a bus in London.

His sophomore effort is equally topical. As the developed world thirsts for the natural resources of the developing world, and the developing world thirsts for the enshrined human rights of the developed world, the author exposes some uncomfortable consequences of globalisation.

His prose occasionally strikes the wrong note. For example, Little Bee is at times cloyingly clever, overdoing the wise-beyond- her-years shtick: 'Everything was happiness and singing when I was a little girl... We did not have electricity or fresh water or sadness either.'

That said, these are mild hiccups in a bold novel which takes the vague issues of newspaper headlines and presents them on a human scale. Chris Cleave has an eye for details that can bring into focus the full character of a place or situation.

Take his darkly humorous portrayal of Sarah's recognition of the ridiculousness of her privileged life as she stands on the beach facing gun-wielding soldiers: 'In the contested delta area of an African country in the middle of a three-way oil war, because there was a beach next to the war... I was wearing a very small green bandeau bikini from Hermes.'

This is a world where some lives are worth less than others, and the author hits out at the moral irresponsibility practised by governments and individuals, while examining the fact that self-interest, for better or worse, is at the root of human motivation.

However, through it all, he also manages to convey the message that hope is never pointless. As Little Bee muses at one point: 'We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, 'I survived'.'

If you like this, read: Two Caravans by Marina Lewycka (2007, $19.21 with GST, Books Kinokuniya). In this by turns hilarious and horrifying novel, a group of legal and illegal immigrants search for a better life in England.

THE OTHER HAND
By Chris Cleave
Sceptre/Paperback/
355 pages/$30.79 before GST
/Major
bookstores/**** 1/2

This article was first published in The Straits Times on Sep 7, 2008.

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