Out of Africa by Karen Blixen
Image by Pablo Sanchez via Flickr
I'm probably one of the few people who hasn't seen all of Out of Africa, the film with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. I've seen chunks of it, but somehow I haven't managed to watch it from beginning to end.
However, I have just finished reading the book.
Karen Blixen's autobiographical memoir is set from the time she arrived in Kenya in 1914 and spans her years in Africa until she is forced to leave in 1931 when the coffee industry flounders and she has to return to Denmark. The book makes very little reference to her husband, Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke, who from the reader's eye appears to be away from the farm most of the time, and only touches on moments spent with Denys Finch-Hatton, whereas the film, based both on this book and additional material, 'elaborates' on this somewhat and fills in the blanks.
I however, want to concentrate on the book... It was published in 1937 and I imagine some of it was written as recollections once Blixen was back in Denmark, but certainly parts of the material comes from Karen's 'Immigrants Notebook', stories of events recorded on the farm from her early arrival. To me the book focuses mostly on life in Africa through Blixen's dealings with the farm workers, the local peoples, the animals and the environment itself.
However, I have just finished reading the book.
Karen Blixen's autobiographical memoir is set from the time she arrived in Kenya in 1914 and spans her years in Africa until she is forced to leave in 1931 when the coffee industry flounders and she has to return to Denmark. The book makes very little reference to her husband, Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke, who from the reader's eye appears to be away from the farm most of the time, and only touches on moments spent with Denys Finch-Hatton, whereas the film, based both on this book and additional material, 'elaborates' on this somewhat and fills in the blanks.
I however, want to concentrate on the book... It was published in 1937 and I imagine some of it was written as recollections once Blixen was back in Denmark, but certainly parts of the material comes from Karen's 'Immigrants Notebook', stories of events recorded on the farm from her early arrival. To me the book focuses mostly on life in Africa through Blixen's dealings with the farm workers, the local peoples, the animals and the environment itself.
A Sense of Africa
Image by Hege via Flickr
The period of time it covers, is of course, a spell in history when both war and change occurred and this volume unsurprisingly mentions these, both of her moving goods for the government during wartime and how change in general affected the people, and to some effect, the land, but it is her storytelling of happenings on and about the farm, and her descriptions that make you feel like you're there.
The thing is that Blixen creates an atmosphere with her writing, a feeling. You get a sense of Africa, the wide, open spaces, the colours, the scents...
“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 blue vigour in it, and at a short distance it painted the ranges of hills and the woods a fresh deep blue.”
The thing is that Blixen creates an atmosphere with her writing, a feeling. You get a sense of Africa, the wide, open spaces, the colours, the scents...
“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 blue vigour in it, and at a short distance it painted the ranges of hills and the woods a fresh deep blue.”
Life in Rural Kenya
Image by tpsdave via Pixabay
The writing style is perhaps somewhat 'old-fashioned' now, being written some time ago, and remember, English would not have been Karen Blixen's first language, but the images that are conjured up in your mind are quite vivid, expansive in fact. Through reading this book I feel like I have been in Kenya. I've seen the local dances, I've experienced the upsets and traumas that have taken place, I've visited with a multicultural set of peoples and I've learnt what it's like (in someway) to live on a remote coffee plantation in rural Kenya. I've been inside farmworkers' huts, I've regularly sat outside at a millstone table, seen the rich, extensive landscape before me and been on safari. I've travelled in planes while looking at the plains beneath me, worked with oxen and crossed the Masai Reserve.
If you'd like to experience this too. If you'd like to be given an impression of life, a hard life sometimes, of working and living in wide, open spaces and dealing with cultures, animals and traditions you may not be used to, then give this book a try. Hell, if you'd just like to read a book by an inspirational woman who did things differently, in a time when a lot of women stuck with the norm (through choice or no) then you shouldn't go wrong with having a peek at this, and getting a sense of Africa from a time that's no longer with us.
If you'd like to experience this too. If you'd like to be given an impression of life, a hard life sometimes, of working and living in wide, open spaces and dealing with cultures, animals and traditions you may not be used to, then give this book a try. Hell, if you'd just like to read a book by an inspirational woman who did things differently, in a time when a lot of women stuck with the norm (through choice or no) then you shouldn't go wrong with having a peek at this, and getting a sense of Africa from a time that's no longer with us.
