Book review
There are few books that endear themselves to me so wholeheartedly that I make a habit of returning to them time and time again. This one will not get the chance to sit idly on my shelf, it will no doubt inevitably suffer a cracked spine between well worn pages.
The author Karen, makes the keen observation that people ‘have become accustomed to take in their impressions by the eye’ and spoke of her dear friend Denys Finch-Hatton ‘who lived much by the ear, [who] preferred hearing a tale told.’ Admittedly, to sit with her book is using the eyes, and yet her words have a way of making it to your ears as though you can hear her telling you a story.
It is because I love to be told a story so much that I became irrationally sappy over this book. I cherish childhood camping trips with my family when my mother would sit ’round the campfire and enchant us with memorized poetry.
When I was growing up, there were times when my brother, sister, and I, would sit around the dinner table and during an evening meal my father would tell us extraordinary stories from the time during the early 1960’s when he lived in the New Zealand bush with the Maori people. His stories of the land and faraway people and their unfamiliar customs would hold me and my siblings spellbound. We grew to love the people and the places just as my father did, and even learned to speak a little Maori. That dinner table and those stories are moments that I often feel pangs of nostalgia for and a desire for the ability to turn back time and go back. Oh to be able to sit upon those sticky plastic floral covered chairs and listen to my father’ stories once again.
Remarkably, within a few pages, I found myself back in that childlike trance listening to faraway stories and splendid bits of poetry. Karen’s book felt much like those dinnertime narratives. Her grownup tales now transformed the notion of my childhood vinyl chair into a cozy lounge on Karen’s farm beside her fireplace or perhaps one carried out onto her lawn so as to sit under the shade of her trees. Reading her words felt like listening to fresh narratives with a different and wonderful array of unfamiliar customs.
Karen Blixen (who wrote under the pseudo name Isak Dinesen) is remarkably gifted at telling stories and penning her thoughts on a wide variety of subjects relating to her time living in Africa. Unlike the famous movie that took pieces of her life and fashioned together a linear and partly fictionalized account of her time there, her book is decidedly different. It is made up of clustered chapters, categories of thoughts and stories. But its telling is MAGNIFICENT.
So magnificent, Denys Finch-Hatton often asked her, ‘Have you got a story?’
She has them. Some are particular and detailed, some perplexing or upsetting, others beautiful and introspective, and plenty which made me laugh with sheer amusement.
Now this is the part where I must give an embarrassing disclaimer. One from someone who hates the movie versions of books and one who refuses to buy any novel featuring a movie cover on it: I shamelessly admit to loving the movie ‘Out of Africa’ starring Meryl Streep. And perhaps the word love is not strong enough since I must further confess to having memorized giant swaths of prose from said movie. I first saw it in the mid-80’s when I was in college and I have probably watched it every year since the invention of the VHS tape. I was entranced with the story of this formidable woman. I was intoxicated by the clothes (the clothes!!!), the music, scenery, characters–all of it worked into a dazzling cinematic tapestry that has drawn me back to it time and time again. To this day, I often listen to the movie’s soundtrack when I travel by train or drive along scenic routes. Yet, as an avid reader, what’s most shameful is for me to admit that I have let so much time pass before I finally read Karen’s own words on the matter. Honestly, I was fearful it wouldn’t hold up to the movie (I know–appalling irony as no movie has EVER been as good as its book), but what a thrill (and relief!) to discover that despite its flow being different than the movie, her words and stories were even more captivating.
Both my father’s and Karen’s stories were intertwined with nature-brutal hard core nature. The kind of nature we are so insulated from in our urbanized world. This for me was the heart of its goodness. Contemporary books in the travel genre don’t even come close to sweeping you into another world as she has done. Perhaps because she didn’t travel there. Karen made a home in Africa, experiencing a time and place that is impossible to experience today. She did not go there on safari, she did not go there to take photos to post on Instagram, nor even to write a book promised to a publisher. She lived there, farmed there, sweated on its plains and sought refuge from the heat under its shade. She worried over it, demanded much from it, and it demanded much from her. She embedded herself among the people, learning bits of their languages and customs and their religions.
I understand that her perspective throughout this book is often regarded as antiquated and that reading parts of her book under today’s context alarm some people. Many parts are not politically correct by today’s standards. Taken as a whole, I believe she masterfully provides us with a glimpse of a long ago era, warts and all. She allows us to meet some remarkable people and reveals the extraordinary challenges of others as well as her own and skillfully sweeps us into her adventures and of those around her. She lets us glimpse into customs and cultures we would never otherwise get the chance to marinate in.
The last chapter, ‘Farewell to the Farm’ found in me a sentimental fool. It took me forever to read as I could only endure small pieces at a time. This chapter was perhaps a revelation in many ways and my heart could only bare it in little tides. She writes that she ‘must have, in some way, got out of the normal course of human existence, into the maelstrom…’ which I, at once recognized as the perfect description for something I have tried to explain yet always failed so miserably to ever describe–this sort of dreadful and beautiful condition of life.
Both her pen and the people are the most beautiful throughout this last chapter.
Like the breath of someone dying, my reading pace slackened over this final chapter and was slow and labored as if to stall the inevitable and linger a little longer before reading the last pages of her extraordinary story.
To Denys Finch-Hatton’s perpetual plea to Karen, ‘Have you got a story?’ My answer is a resounding YES.
- Goodreads rating – 3.92
- REVIEW – Stacy