Kay's Bookshelf

First of all, let’s get Lketinga out of the way. I have never understood how Corinne could see him so beautiful, I have always seen him as ordinary at best. Now he’s fourteen years older and at times he looks like a really old man (though he’s not). As for his behaviour… I have always thought of him as “stuck in the tradition”. He never went to school so there are a lot of things that he doesn’t understand. The word that comes through my head on thinking about him is “wariness”, as one always has to be wary around him, he gets annoyed quite easily. Nevertheless he did his best to make a good impression on Corinne this time around — but I somehow never trusted him enough not to spoil everything though (I was wrong, he behaved sort of okay until the end). A character I have really liked in both books is Lketinga’s mother, Corinne ’s mother-in-law. I can only imagine how surprised she had been at first on seeing that her son wanted to marry a white woman, a woman that knew nothing of the language and habits of the Samburu. Nevertheless Lketinga’s mother has grown to love the stranger and she and Corinne ended up really close. It’s sort of strange seeing the pictures of the woman, as she looks so… primitive — she sure is in a lot of ways, but she does know how to love and make herself loved. Yep, I have really liked her and looked forward to each of her appearances in this book.

As for Corinne… she is now in a sort of pilgrimage to her strange past, a past that she looks back at with fond eyes though it hadn’t been quite easy on her at the time. I liked her simplicity again — the way she just told the stories without trying to over embellish them. I think of her as a very brave woman — I heard some people referring of her as crazy, leaving Europe behind in order to go live in Africa, but I can only think about her as very brave, and I really admire her for that. Of course, the trip in this book had been nothing compared to what she did before, as she wasn’t alone now and she was sort of a minor star — I still admire her and think of her as brave, in the light of her past.

A lot of things have changed in this fourteen years. Modern life is starting to make itself felt even in the middle of the huts in Kenya (there are a lot of plastic bags everywhere now, a lot of stores, a lot of children now go to school). So much so that Corinne started feeling sorry (and I with her) that the people there are going to eventually lose all their wonderful traditions, everything that made them special (not that they have only wonderful traditions, mind you; for example they are still circumcising both boys of a certain age and girls before marriage). I know that eventually they’ll be forced into civilization as there have been others before them — and I cannot help being sorry for everything Corinne has known and found utterly beautiful all these years ago, such as the beauty of girls costumes or the impressiveness of warriors’ getups. The world will probably be a little less colorful place without them.

What I liked most: The changed way Corinne sees Barsaloi (her ex-husband’s village) now. She finds it beautiful but she sees it with the eyes of an European — this had never happened before. She had loved Lketinga so much she ended up disliking her home country and loving the dung houses village, where whole families lived in a hut no larger than a simple room. But now her love had passed and she sees everything like it is, like we the readers of her book saw it back then: different, interesting, beautiful at times but very hard to live in. And you get to realize: oh my God she really loved that guy.

What I liked least: The fact that…well, nothing actually happens in the book. There’s no intrigue, there’s no tension. Sure I was curious to see how Corinne’s family will treat her after all these years, but still. I would be hard pressed if I actually had to narrate the book, as it’s only a string of visits to formerly known places. While we still get to find out some facts about the Masai (such as the adults are never called by their name in their presence — after they have the first child they are called Mama name-of-child and Papa name-of-child; before that some generic words are used, “mparatut” (wife) and “lepayian” (husband)), there’s nothing as fascinating as there was in the first book.

Recommend it? Only if you have read the first book.

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The real main character in this novel is by far Africa – and the little farm at the foot of Ngong Hills. Almost every little detail of the story is there to give out something more of life in Africa, of African people, of African fauna and so on. About three quarters of the book are spent thus, presenting the country as an idyllic place, hardships vaguely mentioned or at all. Unfortunately the farm wasn’t going as well as it should have so in the end Karen had to sell everything and leave — the fourth quarter tells about how this came to be, how they all struggled to keep it from happening but how she had to let it go in the end. Her love of Africa is as pregnant as ever in these last chapters though – even more so as she knows she’ll have to leave the land behind for good in a short while.

I was amazed to see it in the form it had: an endless account of simple happenings, in no particular order. There are a lot of people mentioned, both Native and Europeans, including Berkeley Cole and Denys Finch-Hatton, but none of them holds a place in the story more important than Africa itself does, they all seem to be shown as accessories to Africa’s beauty. I was expecting something totally different having seen the movie a while ago. I was happy to see in the novel none of the sentimentality that had bothered me at times in the movie — in the book Denys is never clearly presented as more than a friend of Karen’s (not that his merely being more than a friend of Karen’s had bothered me in the movie :) ). What’s more, the movie Denys was really annoying for me, the way he put himself always first and always did what he wanted without much care for another’s feelings (including Karen’s). In the book he is said to be totally without self interest — which, needless to say, made me like him a lot more in this version. :)

Animals also take an important place in the story – Karen’s dogs, Lulu (the tamed antelope), the giraffes, the lions – all mentions of them trying to underline the farm’s communion and Karen’s communion with the African wild life, with Africa itself.

What I liked most: The feeling I get while reading, that Karen was really fond of Africa and had really enjoyed her stay there (you can sense her love for that land and its people in almost every word) :) Also, the fact that the story is said in bits and pieces in a non-chronological manner, a thing that I wouldn’t normally like but it seems to fit perfectly here :)

What I liked least: There is a particular scene I have found a little hard to understand: One day Karen and Denys drive by a dead giraffe. A lioness was eating from the body and Denis shot it. Then they drove away. All well so far. Only after a while they drove by the same place on the way back. This time a lion was standing on the giraffe’s carcass and both Karen and Denis were impressed by how majestic it looked. And then Karen shot it (!). And then they had a picnic on the spot (!!)(near the bodies of the two lions and the carcass that was getting pretty smelly by the time of their first drive by). So yuck.

Recommend it? Yes, especially to those who love to read about faraway places :) It’s a wonderful book to find out about the Africa of the beginning of the 20th century.

Some quotes:
About Kamante the cook:

“He had a great memory for recipes. He could not read, and he knew no English so that cookery-books were of no use to him, but he must have held all that he was ever taught stored up in his ungraceful head, according to some systematization of his own, which I should never know. He had named the dishes after some event which had taken place on the day they had been shown to him, and he spoke of the sauce of the lightning that struck the tree, and of the sauce of the grey horse that died.”

Also about Kamante:

“Kamante writes that he has been out of work for a long time. I was not surprised to hear of it, for he was really caviare to the general. I had educated a Royal Cook and left him in a new Colony. It was with him a case of “Open Sesame.” Now the word has been lost, and the stone has closed for good round the mystic treasures that it had in it. Where the great Chef walked in deep thought, full of knowledge, nobody sees anything but a little bandy-legged Kikuyu, a dwarf with a flat, still face.”

About the Ngong hills:

“And were my faith so strong that it could move mountains, that is the mountain that I would make come to me.”

About life in Africa:

“Now, looking back on my life in Africa, I feel that it might altogether be described as the existence of a person who had come from a rushed and noisy world, into a still country.”

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