CBR14BINGO: Hot square (BINGO! Cozy to Question)
(Takes place in Africa, so a hot place. Sun in the title. Sun is hot, no?)
Consulted my ridiculously hefty “to read” list in Goodreads until I found a title with something hot about it. Landed on his dazzling little number and was not disappointed.
I have never read or seen Out of Africa which is something that I will need to remedy since I have now been introduced to some of the players in that world. Karen Blixen, the author of that memoir, is a key character in this book which puts a historical spin on both her memoir and Beryl Markham’s memoir West With the Night. Both memoirs chronicle their lives in colonial Keyna. Karen was a Danish woman who went to Africa with her husband to run a coffee farm. Beryl was a Brit that grew up on her father’s horse farm.
Moving with her family to Kenya when she was two, Beryl has no memory of England. She is raised alongside the native Kipsigis children, hunting, riding horses and living her best life outdoors. After 5 years, her mother leaves the family, taking Beryl’s older brother with her back to England. Confused by her abandonment, Beryl relies on her relationships with her father and friends in the tribe. She works hard, plays hard and is anything but the educated respectable daughter of Britain. All attempts to turn her into one are thwarted.
It’s a sweeping story about a girl figuring out how to become a woman in a tight-knit enclave of wealthy adults with confusing moral codes, rampant life-ruining gossip, and a cultural vocabulary that she was never educated in. Throw in thoroughbred horse racing, aviation, breathtakingly detailed landscapes, royals, and a smoldering big game hunter and you have a great escape into a Gatsby-esque world full to the brim with heat, dangerous wildlife, and gin.