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3.62 AVERAGE
3.62 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
slow-paced
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
sad
tense
medium-paced
A prose that flows as well as a river, and an ending quite poignant. If one excuses some of the dated language and how some descriptions toe the line of "Africa is a country" trope, this memoir will be a very profound reading experience.
Interesting set of memoirs about a woman's time on her farm in Kenya. As a settler in Africa in the 1930s, her views are obviously outdated and at times laughable. Past that, however, the book is a unique look at native culture before it assimilated Western values. Her writing style is straightforward and engaging. Although the book only addresses a portion of her life (the introduction notes she wrote many other books), it is a worthwhile read.
medium-paced
It was interesting, but ultimately a dry, emotionless tale.
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Mi dispiace perché il film mi era piaciuto molto ma il libro non mi ha presa per niente...
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3575849.html
Blixen is no anthropologist, but she makes a serious effort to engage with Kenya and the people on their own terms and to describe it respectfully to her European audience. She goes fairly deeply into religion, which is not mentioned on screen at all. As already noted, she carefully distinguished between the different African and non-African groups, and it's clear that her Kenya is very racially mixed, and that the days of white rule, only a few decades old, are already numbered.
It's not actually a novel. It's a collection of short reflective pieces, all of course linked, four of the five sections pursuing their own internal thread (though the penultimate sections is a grab-bag of vignettes). I think perhaps a third or a quarter of what's in the book made it to the screen. The core plot of the film, her romance with Finch-Hatton, is not at all explicit in the book, though it's pretty obvious what is going on from the number of times his name is mentioned, and it's almost a shock when her husband is mentioned for the first time on page 193 of 283. There is not a lot explicitly about racism, but here's one of the short pieces in full:
The Elite of Bournemouth
I had as neighbour a settler who had been a doctor at home. Once, when the wife of one of my houseboys was about to die in childbirth, and I could not get into Nairobi, because the long rains had ruined the roads, I wrote to my neighbour and asked him to do me the great service of coming over and helping her. He very kindly came, in the midst of a terrible thunderstorm and torrents of tropical rain, and, at the last moment, by his skill, he saved the life of the woman and the child.
Afterwards he wrote me a letter to say that although he had for once, on my appeal, treated a Native, I must understand that he could not let that sort of thing occur again. I myself would fully realize the fact, he felt convinced, when he informed me that he had before now, practised to the élite of Bournemouth.
And there is some gorgeous description, especially of the landscape. Here's the description of her first plane flight with Finch-Hatton:
We flew in the sun, but the hillside lay in a transparent brown shade, which soon we got into. It did not take us long to spy the buffalo from the air. Upon one of the long rounded green ridges which run, like folds of a cloth gathered together at each peak, down the side of the Ngong mountain, a herd of twenty-seven buffalo were grazing. First we saw them a long way below us, like mice moving gently on a floor, but we dived down, circling over and along their ridge, a hundred and fifty feet above them and well within shooting distance; we counted them as they peacefully blended and separated. There was one very old big black bull in the herd, one or two younger bulls, and a number of calves. The open stretch of sward upon which they walked was closed in by bush; had a stranger approached on the ground they would have heard or scented him at once, but they were not prepared for advance from the air. We had to keep moving above them all the time. They heard the noise of our machine and stopped grazing, but they did not seem to have it in them to look up. In the end they realized that something very strange was about; the old bull first walked out in front of the herd, raising his hundredweight horns, braving the unseen enemy, his four feet planted on the ground – suddenly he began to trot down the ridge and after a moment he broke into a canter. The whole clan now followed him, stampeding headlong down, and as they switched and plunged into the bush, dust and loose stones rose in their wake. In the thicket they stopped and kept close together: it looked as if a small glade in the hill had been paved with dark grey stones. Here they believed themselves to be covered to the view, and so they were to anything moving along the ground, but they could not hide themselves from the eyes of the bird of the air. We flew up and away.
There's also a lovely anecdote about a young Swede teaching her Swahili, who is embarrassed by the fact that the Swahili for "nine" (tisa) sounds like the Swedish for "pee" (tisse), and convinces her that there is in fact no number nine in Swahili until someone puts her straight. I sympathise a little. I have known a number of baronesses in my time, and I don't recall ever saying the word "pee" in front of any of them.
One other point that I noted while researching this post: they were all younger than we see on screen, the men much younger. When Karen married Baron Blixen in 1914, she was 28 and he was 27. She first met Denys Finch Hatton in 1918, when she was 33 and he was 31. Meryl Streep was 36 when the film was made, Klaus Maria Brandauer 42 and Robert Redford 49. Knowing the real ages of the protagonists does change the way you understand the story, I think.
Kenya is not a country I know much about - I changed planes in Nairobi three times in my South Sudan days, with long stopovers but no tourism each time, and the only other books I've read that explore it in any detail are also autobiographies, by Barack Obama and Vince Cable. Unlike the other two, this book made me want to know more.
Blixen is no anthropologist, but she makes a serious effort to engage with Kenya and the people on their own terms and to describe it respectfully to her European audience. She goes fairly deeply into religion, which is not mentioned on screen at all. As already noted, she carefully distinguished between the different African and non-African groups, and it's clear that her Kenya is very racially mixed, and that the days of white rule, only a few decades old, are already numbered.
It's not actually a novel. It's a collection of short reflective pieces, all of course linked, four of the five sections pursuing their own internal thread (though the penultimate sections is a grab-bag of vignettes). I think perhaps a third or a quarter of what's in the book made it to the screen. The core plot of the film, her romance with Finch-Hatton, is not at all explicit in the book, though it's pretty obvious what is going on from the number of times his name is mentioned, and it's almost a shock when her husband is mentioned for the first time on page 193 of 283. There is not a lot explicitly about racism, but here's one of the short pieces in full:
The Elite of Bournemouth
I had as neighbour a settler who had been a doctor at home. Once, when the wife of one of my houseboys was about to die in childbirth, and I could not get into Nairobi, because the long rains had ruined the roads, I wrote to my neighbour and asked him to do me the great service of coming over and helping her. He very kindly came, in the midst of a terrible thunderstorm and torrents of tropical rain, and, at the last moment, by his skill, he saved the life of the woman and the child.
Afterwards he wrote me a letter to say that although he had for once, on my appeal, treated a Native, I must understand that he could not let that sort of thing occur again. I myself would fully realize the fact, he felt convinced, when he informed me that he had before now, practised to the élite of Bournemouth.
And there is some gorgeous description, especially of the landscape. Here's the description of her first plane flight with Finch-Hatton:
We flew in the sun, but the hillside lay in a transparent brown shade, which soon we got into. It did not take us long to spy the buffalo from the air. Upon one of the long rounded green ridges which run, like folds of a cloth gathered together at each peak, down the side of the Ngong mountain, a herd of twenty-seven buffalo were grazing. First we saw them a long way below us, like mice moving gently on a floor, but we dived down, circling over and along their ridge, a hundred and fifty feet above them and well within shooting distance; we counted them as they peacefully blended and separated. There was one very old big black bull in the herd, one or two younger bulls, and a number of calves. The open stretch of sward upon which they walked was closed in by bush; had a stranger approached on the ground they would have heard or scented him at once, but they were not prepared for advance from the air. We had to keep moving above them all the time. They heard the noise of our machine and stopped grazing, but they did not seem to have it in them to look up. In the end they realized that something very strange was about; the old bull first walked out in front of the herd, raising his hundredweight horns, braving the unseen enemy, his four feet planted on the ground – suddenly he began to trot down the ridge and after a moment he broke into a canter. The whole clan now followed him, stampeding headlong down, and as they switched and plunged into the bush, dust and loose stones rose in their wake. In the thicket they stopped and kept close together: it looked as if a small glade in the hill had been paved with dark grey stones. Here they believed themselves to be covered to the view, and so they were to anything moving along the ground, but they could not hide themselves from the eyes of the bird of the air. We flew up and away.
There's also a lovely anecdote about a young Swede teaching her Swahili, who is embarrassed by the fact that the Swahili for "nine" (tisa) sounds like the Swedish for "pee" (tisse), and convinces her that there is in fact no number nine in Swahili until someone puts her straight. I sympathise a little. I have known a number of baronesses in my time, and I don't recall ever saying the word "pee" in front of any of them.
One other point that I noted while researching this post: they were all younger than we see on screen, the men much younger. When Karen married Baron Blixen in 1914, she was 28 and he was 27. She first met Denys Finch Hatton in 1918, when she was 33 and he was 31. Meryl Streep was 36 when the film was made, Klaus Maria Brandauer 42 and Robert Redford 49. Knowing the real ages of the protagonists does change the way you understand the story, I think.
Kenya is not a country I know much about - I changed planes in Nairobi three times in my South Sudan days, with long stopovers but no tourism each time, and the only other books I've read that explore it in any detail are also autobiographies, by Barack Obama and Vince Cable. Unlike the other two, this book made me want to know more.