This is was a 3.5 for me. There were some parts I lived but other parts I didn’t enjoy so much.

There were some interesting moments in this book being told from the point of view of a child. It also shows the cultures in Africa and how they interacted with European settlers.

I had been searching for this book for a few years after reading an article about the author-she lived a full and adventurous life. It had also mentioned her childhood in Africa and I have been drawn to stories of Africa since reading the book West With the Night years ago. Well at last I found the book at a reasonable price and settled down to enjoy. The writing style was strange-it was sort of written in the first person but not always. She seemed to mostly refer to her parents by their first names which was a bit off putting to me. Respect for them was often lacking as well. They did seem immature in many decisions so I could forgive that. Very little respect was shown to the Natives...this was harder to overlook, The descriptions of the countryside, everyday life, animals, insects, snakes and so on were detailed and unsettling to me. I read most of this book but finally admitted to myself that I was not enjoying the book. Perhaps it was the bugs-it is insect season where I live-not that it is anything like what this family dealt with but I do believe that our bugs were seeming more aggressive and larger to me this summer! The lack of respect for Africa and it's people was also just something I could not just ignore. But the worst thing of all was that after looking for this book for years, I suddenly realized that I have started this book a couple times before and was not able to finish then either! OH WELL!

A wonderful study of many people's mixing and adapting to each other.

I’m not blaming a kid for her own colonialist attitudes. But they made this novel hard to read. The descriptions were evocative, but they were tempered by the unknowingly racist perspective of a British girl in colonial Africa. My grandma made me read this book, but she didn’t use it as a talking point, but instead presented it as it was. However, it was still bad, and I would still consider it slightly racist, if well-written, if I read this on my own. This book is funny, though. I’ll give it that.

I finished reading the Flame Trees of Thika for the first time this week. (I finally got it back from the hotel where I left it in Dubai.) I loved the PBS miniseries as a child and the book was even better. It is an insightful look at Elspeth Huxley’s childhood in Kenya and her family’s attempt to settle and create a coffee plantation in the years leading up to WWI.

She was either a very perceptive child or grew to understand a lot more before she wrote the book. I found it a little unsettling that in telling the story, she referred to her parents by their first names, but I got used to it. It gave some distance to them so that everyone existed as their own person and not just in their relation to one another.

I highly recommend it!

A great autobiographical work from a writer who wrote mystery stories (but too few, alas) on a par with Agatha Christie.

This was a fascinating read; however, it wasn't very cohesive. I learned so much about Nairobi. Huxley is a gifted author who paints a vivid portrait of her life in Africa.

I enjoyed this memoir very much. I did think it odd that Huxley referred to her parents by their first names. I also have reservations that at 6 or 7 she remembered things that clearly but I suppose every good book depends on good research.

Amazing description of the author's early childhood in Kenya in the 1910s. What courage. What beauty. I could hear and smell and taste Africa in her words

A well-written memoir of a childhood spent in East Africa before WWI.

Magical images

Magical, depictions of Africa right before the start of WWI. Beautiful story & images. Would like to know more about the author and more pictures.

I found the reading of this book a bit tedious. When I could devote a good bit of time to it, I enjoyed it, but if I could only pick it up for a few minutes, it would not hold my attention. I read it for a book club so it's good because I never would have read it otherwise. I won't read the sequel. It took me a while to figure out who Robin and Tilly were since she never rarely referred to them as her mother and father. It was heartbreaking to read of all the animals in Kenya that are so reduced in number today. It was interesting to see the freedoms this child had in the bush. She seemed to go from pillar to post with people trusted by her parents. Only rarely did they intervene in her activities and to protect her from one man who just seemed to give them the creeps.