Amazon US $4.97 $9.52
Amazon CA $26.98
Adventure /Biographical Fiction
20th Cent (pre WWII)
Africa
In 1936, aged thirty-four, Beryl Markham set out to be the first woman
to fly single-handed across the Atlantic. This is where the book begins and
ends, but in between it tells of what went into the making of a remarkable
woman.
The voice is Beryl’s, as Paula McLain imagines it. Everything is
therefore immediate; we see Kenya and the people who adopt it as their home
only as they impact upon her. We have to decide if we can trust the narrator;
and from the beginning, when her mother abandons her and she turns to Lady
Delamere for female guidance, she seems almost incapable of being dishonest.
Her chaotic upbringing by her father teaches her everything about
horses, and not much about anything else. She runs free with the tribal children,
learning how to hunt with them, until, as a female, she is no longer permitted
to do so - an exclusion that is hard for her to accept.
She is a child who does not fit comfortably into either the colonial
or the native world, but she knows where she wants to be. At 16, when the First
World War causes her father to fall into financial difficulties which force him
to leave the farm, she marries a neighbour rather than give up the land where
she feels most at home.
She embarks upon a series of affairs amongst a set of people to whom
morals only apply if one is caught out. As an expert horse trainer, her skills
are much in demand, but even that will not save her from ostracism if she goes
too far.
Beryl learns not to try to fit in, but to make her own way in the
ex-pat world of the Happy Valley set. She is who she is, and her mistakes are
her own. She finds love, but that is also a betrayal. A mould-breaker but still
a product of her time, perhaps she could only have existed at that point in
history, in that country. Kenya made her, and broke her, and made her again.
The novelisation of a life is a balancing act; there are no
photographs of the real characters – Beryl, Karen Blixen of Out of Africa fame, Denys Finch-Hatton,
Prince Harry, the Delameres – perhaps because, however accurate the facts, this
is not an biography, but a sketch of a snapshot of a moment in time.
Beautifully and at times lyrically written, the book left me wanting
to know more, and to go in search of those photographs, as though to see them
would help me to better understand how it could all have happened. They didn’t.
Photographs are posed, and distancing, and therefore less honest than Beryl
appears through the words ascribed to her.
Paula McLain used Beryl’s own writings as a first-hand resource for
what is a well-researched, engaging read, sympathetic to a subject who never
courted sympathy. I recommend it.
© Lorraine Swobod
 |
| Cover selected for Cover of the Month |
<previous next >
return to BOOKSHELF (Home Page) then scroll down for more items of interest
I very much enjoyed Circling the Sun too, Lorraine. I read the audiobook version, as beautifully narrated as it was written.
ReplyDeleteThank you Janet - I'll look out for that audio version I think!
ReplyDelete