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3.77 AVERAGE
3.77 AVERAGE
Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) wrote this collection of memories from her time owning and operating a coffee farm in the Ngong Hills. If you're reading this expecting to see the script from Out of Africa, you'll be sorely disappointed. That was my initial expectation but I stuck with the book and as a result, feel like I have a much richer and more detailed picture of life in Kenya in the early 20th century.
Some readers have objected to Blixen's language and description of Kenyans and various tribal people. I think to place modern standards and interpretations of her language is to ignore that fact that this book was written nearly 80 years ago. Language, society, customs and cultures have changed so much that we cannot judge her language or her views. What this book accomplishes is to preserve the mindset (and a pretty damn forward thinking one at that!) of a specific time period for future readers. I don't have to remind other readers that if we don't know our history, we are doomed to repeat it.
Books like Out of Africa are precious not only for their historic importance, but for the preservation of a way of telling stories. This is a written ethnography of a particular group of people at a particular time. While I struggled at times with the narration, it was good to be reminded of how stories were told. I bet this book would be an amazing audio book as the verbose and descriptive style might be better heard rather than read.
If you've only seen the film, I highly recommend the book. It's lovely, different and some of the passages are absolutely breathtaking.
Some readers have objected to Blixen's language and description of Kenyans and various tribal people. I think to place modern standards and interpretations of her language is to ignore that fact that this book was written nearly 80 years ago. Language, society, customs and cultures have changed so much that we cannot judge her language or her views. What this book accomplishes is to preserve the mindset (and a pretty damn forward thinking one at that!) of a specific time period for future readers. I don't have to remind other readers that if we don't know our history, we are doomed to repeat it.
Books like Out of Africa are precious not only for their historic importance, but for the preservation of a way of telling stories. This is a written ethnography of a particular group of people at a particular time. While I struggled at times with the narration, it was good to be reminded of how stories were told. I bet this book would be an amazing audio book as the verbose and descriptive style might be better heard rather than read.
If you've only seen the film, I highly recommend the book. It's lovely, different and some of the passages are absolutely breathtaking.
I gave this 70 pages and it just didn't draw me in. It seemed pretty dated in its depiction of Africa.
adventurous
reflective
medium-paced
As I had been to Kenya about the time of the filming, I was a fan of the movie. Many years later I finally read the book, which I enjoyed, but must admit is quite a divergence from the movie or vice versa. There were certainly stories in the book that were as interesting as the portions chosen for the film. Of course Karen Blixen is an outsider in a strange land, and settles there with much privilege. If you can get past that, you will enjoy many good stories told.
Spoiler alert: It may have been the era, considering that Blixen had to publish under a male nom de plume, but one can’t assume that she and Dennis Finch-Hatton were anything more than friends from her book. This may be disappointing for anyone who was hoping to read the love story so prominent in the film.
Spoiler alert: It may have been the era, considering that Blixen had to publish under a male nom de plume, but one can’t assume that she and Dennis Finch-Hatton were anything more than friends from her book. This may be disappointing for anyone who was hoping to read the love story so prominent in the film.
The few beautiful moments of prose don’t make up for the overarching white savior sentiments throughout the entire book. I recognize that this was probably considered progressive for when it was written, but it definitely doesn’t hold up well.
It also felt disjointed and probably would’ve faired better as a series of short stories.
It also felt disjointed and probably would’ve faired better as a series of short stories.
I really hated the first 3/4 of this book. I didn't like the anecdotal style of writing. I didn't like that there was no chronological order. It read very much like an unpracticed storyteller, "this one thing happened, i'm going to talk about it for 20 pages. but wait, this thing happened before that, and i'll talk about that. i guess i'm going to skip ahead 5 years and tell you this other story, and then go back to the beginning to share a different story." I really disliked that.
I hated the narrator. Reading her insights on the savage, animalistic natives grew tiring. I found the narrator to be narcissistic and pretentious, having the audacity to compare herself to a god more than once, and claiming that she was a sort of idol to the natives. Also, the phrase "All natives..." occurred more times than I could possibly count, and drove me crazy.
I would have given this book 1 star, but I really really enjoyed the ending. I ended the story with a deep respect for the narrator. The last 40 pages were heart wrenching and totally relatable. The way the narrator dealt with loss of that magnitude was inspiring, and nearly the only saving grace of this book. This is a beautifully written novel, especially the ending, so it gets three stars instead of just one.
I hated the narrator. Reading her insights on the savage, animalistic natives grew tiring. I found the narrator to be narcissistic and pretentious, having the audacity to compare herself to a god more than once, and claiming that she was a sort of idol to the natives. Also, the phrase "All natives..." occurred more times than I could possibly count, and drove me crazy.
I would have given this book 1 star, but I really really enjoyed the ending. I ended the story with a deep respect for the narrator. The last 40 pages were heart wrenching and totally relatable. The way the narrator dealt with loss of that magnitude was inspiring, and nearly the only saving grace of this book. This is a beautifully written novel, especially the ending, so it gets three stars instead of just one.
Fue una sorpresa agradable que disfrute mucho, ya que por el antecedente de la película pensaba sería una historia romántica y melosa, y encontré una suerte de diario personal no sobre la vida de la persona sino sobre la vida en el lugar. Con narraciones muy detalladas del paisaje, que en un par de ocasiones debo aceptar me distrajeron un poco, y un tono en ocasiones inadecuado debido a cuestiones raciales que considerando el ambiente eran normales para la época y por lo tanto no pasaban como mal visto.
Oh, this book made me very conflicted. On the one hand, it evokes Kenya in the 1920s and all of these people and this world very clearly and it's very fascinating and it's so well-written. On the other hand, holy colonialist mindset, Batman! The utter surety Dinesen/Blixen has that white European civilization is some sort of mature pinnacle even while talking about the various ways white peoples' ideas are not great. And sometimes her descriptions of different cultures ARE sympathetic and interesting - her parts about the Somali women in particular. Sometimes they are so racist it's almost a joke - the bits on the Maasai in particular struck me as "wowwwwww".
On the other hand, it took me a while to read this because it made me want to learn more about cultures and parts of the world that my education utterly failed at discussing. Both the colonialism, like how the British were stealing lands from the various peoples of Kenya in the 1920s and 1930s AND the world before white colonialism. A lot of what is interesting in the book is how this eastern part of Africa was clearly full of history and cultural interplay well before white folks decided they could make $$. The Indian and Arab influences, the slave markets, the Somali migrations, the relationship between the Kikuyu and the Maasai as well as other peoples...to me it sounds like significant history and yet it's a blank and one I wouldn't have considered without reading this.
Like I said, I'm conflicted.
On the other hand, it took me a while to read this because it made me want to learn more about cultures and parts of the world that my education utterly failed at discussing. Both the colonialism, like how the British were stealing lands from the various peoples of Kenya in the 1920s and 1930s AND the world before white colonialism. A lot of what is interesting in the book is how this eastern part of Africa was clearly full of history and cultural interplay well before white folks decided they could make $$. The Indian and Arab influences, the slave markets, the Somali migrations, the relationship between the Kikuyu and the Maasai as well as other peoples...to me it sounds like significant history and yet it's a blank and one I wouldn't have considered without reading this.
Like I said, I'm conflicted.
The movie, "Out of Africa", while excellent, is not at all like the book. (I know I'm not the first person to say this.) The book is also excellent. Dinesen's style is leisurely, and the book worked best for me when I took my time and savored it.
There are some who feel that Dinesen's portrayal of her African servants is not especially enlightened, but I beg to differ. The love and respect she felt for them is apparent, and the much of "Shadows on the Grass" is a moving tribute to her former servants, who returned her love and respect.
There are some who feel that Dinesen's portrayal of her African servants is not especially enlightened, but I beg to differ. The love and respect she felt for them is apparent, and the much of "Shadows on the Grass" is a moving tribute to her former servants, who returned her love and respect.
I am struggling to rate this book - I think I'm in a pretty unique position when reviewing this book because I lived in Ethiopia for 10 years and my parents ran a farm there. That also being said I also visited Blixen's old house & in general I've been in Kenya quite often. My experiences are of course very different, but I do think Blixen captured the experience of an expat living in africa really well and I related to it a lot. However basically everything else was not something I really enjoyed. I didn't really care for the romance which is not as big a part of the book as I thought it would be but still a big part.
slow-paced
Colonial obliviousness posing as thoughtfulness. She concludes by comparing herself (again) as a god figure to the Kikuyu squatters. if you think of her as a god out of greek myth — vain, petty, cruel, and so on — the analogy sort of works.