"We're all of us afraid of many things, but if you make yourself smaller or let your fear confine you, then you really aren't your own person at all---are you? The real question is whether or not you will risk what it takes to be happy."
- Karen Blixen, from the novel
One of the other Page Turners selected this book for our group. I enjoyed it very much and gave it a 5 rating. I confess I read much of it before I realized it was a fictionalized account of a real person's life. The cover says A Novel and I took that at face value, never having heard of Beryl Markham. As it turns out she was a real woman and ahead of her time in many ways.
Beryl's story is sad in parts and inspiring in others. Her mother abandons her when she is very young and she is raised by an emotionally distant father in colonial Kenya, and in some ways by the nearby Kipsigis tribe. It reminded me of "it takes a village to raise a child." She grows up loving her freedom, the land and the animals, particularly the horses they tend and train. She later becomes the first woman to earn an English trainer's license. It was an interesting coincidence that I was reading this novel during Triple Crown racing season.
Beryl's social life is a roller coaster as she gets involved in several toxic relationships with men. When she finally meets her soul-mate, it is someone she cannot have.
Much later in the book she learns to fly a plane and becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, east to west. You would think I would have heard of her! Amelia Earhart, yes; Bessie Coleman, yes; Beryl Markham, no.
----------------------------------
Refreshments at our meeting today? Tasty edibles and delicious faux champagne! (Hey, we meet in a church.) A creative choice since characters were drinking champagne frequently!
I found Circling the Sun a real page turner, but not everyone in our group agreed. The group average was 3.6 with only one rating of 5 besides my own. Many of us agreed that Ms. McLain's writing style is pleasing and she develops the sense of place beautifully to make us see and feel Kenya in the 1920's.
One member who had read Beryl Markham's memoir, West with the Night and Isak Dennison's Out of Africa (story from Karen's perspective, see quote above) thought this book was a "shameless rip-off of the actual autobiographies." One thought it presumptuous of McLain to write Beryl's fictionalized story in first person but others of us found it more personal.
Our group had a hard time relating to the decadence of this society with all the drinking and marital infidelities. But we were reminded of the time---Roaring 20's, and place---British colonial Africa. I said it seemed a bit Gatsbyesque to me. Not a good thing for most of our group since we couldn't identify with those characters either.
Several of us who never heard of Beryl Markham were glad we read the book. Perhaps some who had not read the other two books mentioned above enjoyed it more than those who made the comparison. A few were heard to say they want to watch the film "Out of Africa" again.
One thing's for sure: this one gives you plenty to talk about!
No comments:
Post a Comment