Out of Africa in The Complete Idiots Guide to the Ultimate Reading List

Jan 05, 2012 Lisa (Harmonybites) rated it really liked it

Shelves: classics, memoir, ultimate-reading-list, ebooks, 2012-around-the-world, fiction, literary-fiction, biography, travel, non-fiction

Out of Africa is the memoir of a Dutch woman's seventeen years on her coffee plantation in Kenya from 1914 to 1931. I had never read Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) before--and I haven't seen the film based on this book--but I could immediately tell I was in the hands of a poet. Her description of Africa is very lyrical--the book is studded with prose poems to nature, describing with lush imagery the skies, the trees (it did not grow in bows or cupolas, but in horizontal layers...gave to the solitar Out of Africa is the memoir of a Dutch woman's seventeen years on her coffee plantation in Kenya from 1914 to 1931. I had never read Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) before--and I haven't seen the film based on this book--but I could immediately tell I was in the hands of a poet. Her description of Africa is very lyrical--the book is studded with prose poems to nature, describing with lush imagery the skies, the trees (it did not grow in bows or cupolas, but in horizontal layers...gave to the solitary trees a likeness to...full-rigged ships) or elephant herds in the forest (...in a giant size, the border of a very old, infinitely precious Persian carpet, in the dyes of green, yellow and black-brown). Indeed, the prose is so gorgeous, that given her anecdotal structure and love of 1001 Nights, I'd say this is one magical carpet ride. So many passages are quotable and unforgettable.

I felt more mixed on her depictions of the "Natives." She had some keen observations of customs and behaviors, but she made my inner PC squirm a bit, and continually wonder what the Kikuyu, Somali and Masai would have had to say about her interpretations. Every once in a while, some of the oppressiveness of the colonial system comes through in her tales, as when some of her workers are jailed for performing traditional dances, or her cook flees because his former employer threatens to have him conscripted if he doesn't come back, or a young boy is flogged to death for a minor infraction and the colonist gets off lightly. Dinesen does speak of how the natives were robbed of their lands, and how they can't even legally buy land under the colonial system. I didn't get much of a sense of outrage from Dinesen, but she comes across as far from callous. In fact I think a lot of mutual respect and love between her and the people around her comes through. Remember, this was published in 1937. It was a very different time and Dinesen sees things from a very different lens than we would in post-colonial times. I don't think you can just dismiss her as racist; it's more complicated than that. To enjoy the book, you have to see her view of things as all part of the ride.

I think what I found most wanting though, in what is supposed to be a memoir, is any sense of her inner self beyond her response to Africa. A brief note about Dinesen heading the text hinted at a very interesting life. She had a troubled marriage, an intense love affair with Denys Finch-Hatton, that's pretty much absent from the memoir. Her husband is barely mentioned. The book's brief biographical note says he infected her with syphilis. Ibsen's Ghosts, which deals with that subject, is actually mentioned in the memoir, but Dinesen never alluded to the connection. And while Finch-Hatton is featured in two of the chapters, "Wings" and "A Grave in the Hills" she never hints they were lovers. The book probably should be subtitled "notes about a Kenyan coffee plantation" because what she relates felt very fragmentary, not pulled together into a unified story, and strangely impersonal. I don't think that's a flaw per se, but very much part of her design. But it left me frustrated at times, leaving me wishing I could read some commentator or companion book that would let me know all about what Dinesen leaves obscured. ...more

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Sep 05, 2012 Leslie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: memoirs-biography

Occasionally, you come across a book that you just have to read after having watched a movie based loosely on it. I purchased this book a few years ago and it has been patiently waiting for me to pick it up and immerse myself in the memories of the author. The descriptions are wonderful and the vignettes powerful.

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