Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen - 5 stars (on the bookshelf)

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

I didn't know what to expect. To say that I was pleasantly surprised would be a gross understatement. It is her love of Africa that comes through so clearly. I have no desire to go to Africa, but I could relate to her because she felt so at one with her chosen land. I underscored many passages, but it is this one - on page 2! - that decided I would love this forever.

Looking back on a sojourn in the African highlands, you are struck by your feeling of having lived for a time up in the air. The sky was rarely more than pale blue or violet, with a profusion of mighty, weightless, ever-changing clouds towering up and sailing on it, but it has a blue vigour in it, and at a short distance it painted the ranges of hills and the woods a fresh deep blue. In the middle of the day the air was alive over the land, like a flame burning; it scintillated, waved and shone like running water, mirrored and doubled all objects and created great Fata Morgana. Up in this high air you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of heart. In the highlands you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be.

Recently my husband and I enjoyed a documentary on migrating birds. When I came to a short passage where Dinesen remarked about the storks, having seen them in both their winter and summer habitats, I thought what a privilege to have gotten to witness that. But the bird passage that most impressed me was one about cranes. In that migration documentary was video of cranes dancing. What remarkable birds! But Dinesen had something special for me.

With their delicate pale grey colouring, the little black velvet skull-cap and the fan-shaped crown, the cranes have all the air of light, spirited frescoes. When, after the dance, they lift and go away, to keep up the sacred tone of the show they give out, by the wings or the voice, a clear ringing note, as if a group of church bells had taken to the wind and were sailing off. You can hear them a long way away, even after the birds themselves have become invisible in the sky: a chime from the clouds.

Unlike many memoirs or autobiographies, this is not a chronological tale of "first I did this, and then I did that." This is a being at one with the earth and all that she found on it. She was at one not just with the animals, or her farmland, but also with the people - both white and Native. She tells of them all as she found them. She respected them all for what they were. We cannot know, of course, what others thought of her, but if this work is even close to the truth, she, in turn, was respected by almost everyone.

I have since discovered she has published a number of short story collections. Because this work is so famous, I really had not paid any attention to other work. I will be looking for something else.

[Ladyslott]

This is on the pbt 100 nonfiction list

I plan on reading it shortly. I also read Beryl Markham's book West with the Night and loved it, the writing was beautiful. It is also on the list.

[Susie]

I read this s long time ago and loved it.

[Book Concierge]

I agree, Elizabeth ... her great love was Africa (not Denys)

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Book Concierge wrote: "I agree, Elizabeth ... her great love was Africa (not Denys)"

It was probably that they both loved Africa so that brought them together.

[Denizen]

I've had this book for some time but have never quite gotten around to it. It sounds like something I would truly enjoy.