Huxley's beautifully written, enchantingly evocative and poignant memoir about her childhood years living in Kenya, 1912-1914 with her parents.

This was a slow starter but once I was well into it, I see why it's still talked about after all these years. This beautifully written memoir takes place entirely in the author's childhood, spending a few years on a farm in Kenya before WWI. The author is somehow able to maintain the magical perspective of childhood and communicate this, tinted only slightly by what her older understanding must have added to her experiences. She explores, as a child, and we see with eyes of childhood, the relations between whites and blacks, family dynamics, an extramarital affair, death--beautifully done.

Saw this in the early 80s on PBS, did not do justice to this fabulous book!

This is the book from which I got my name. Autobiographical, it is a delightful story about a young girl who moves to Africa with her parents when it's first being colonized by Europeans. It is her memories about her family, neighbors and natives as they start a coffee farm.

This book is a sisters book club book chosen by Elspeth.

This is basically "Ann of Green Gables" meets 1900s Colonial Africa. The memoirs of growing up British, on a plantation, pre-WW I, with all the expectations of upper crust British society meeting the African natives, their life styles and customs is truly culture clash. This was made into a Masterpiece Theater presentation (Hayley Mills was the mother)....good read and the history you learn is painless. The Mottle Lizard, the conclusion, is also very good...but I prefer the Flame Trees best.

This was an interesting account of the end of colonialism in Africa. It sounds like an idyllic life for the Whites. It's hard to rate. The writing is so good and the characters jump off the page.

It's also tricky because the author doesn't even try to make narration sound like a little girl. There are some situations she doesn't understand, but her vocabulary is that of an adult. That didn't bother me, but you may disagree.

The book ends with the coming of WWI and the rush among British expats to join up. Elspeth gets packed off to England while her father enlists. Worth reading, even if it's really slow, but TW for racism, sexism, and colonialism. Also frequent animal death.

In 1913 six-year-old Elspeth Grant (later Huxley)'s parents started a coffee farm on undeveloped bush in Kenya. This is a lightly fictionalised memoir of their first two years in Africa, based on Elspeth's and her mother's memories. It has a great deal of charm, although some parts seem odd and inappropriate when narrated by a young child.

A touching ending fails to make up for an otherwise lifeless account of Huxley’s childhood. Her position as a child narrator prevents her from critically assessing the racism around her - while the author herself might have not held these views, this book lacks her perspective and is shaped by the lives of the people around her.

This wonderful classic of the European settling days in Kenya and Tanzania, in many cases first contact with white people for the natives, is a delight. I love Elsbeth Huxley's writing style. I love the stories within the main story. The variety of characters is wonderful and, I am sure, accurate. I have seen the Tv version many times but never read the whole original. Finally found an untouched copy, published in 1959, and never before read in perfect condition.

I loved this book. I love the movie based on the movie I loved listening to it on CD as I drove across the country. I think I should read some of her other books again because they all make my heart flutter

A few years before the First World War, Elspeth Huxley’s family emigrated to British East Africa, homesteading a farm on the high Kenyan plateau where, despite living under the belt of the equator, the climate was relatively mild. Among the first colonists in the region, they might as well have been from another planet, they were so thoroughly out of place.

Huxley’s memoir, however, is not a meditation on colonialism. She has no axe to grind or cause to champion. She only has a story to tell, filtered through a child’s memories, of fantastic animals and landscapes, grand adventures and shocking violence, and the adults around her struggling (with mixed success) to adapt themselves to a new environment.

One of my favorite scenes involves a conversation between our young narrator, her mother Tilly, and one of their nearest neighbors - Lettice - whose romantic life (even in the bush) is a constant fascination for everyone:

’Don’t ask so many questions,’ Tilly said. ‘It is bad manners.’

‘But if I don’t ask questions, how shall I find out things?’

‘You are not supposed to be a private detective.’

‘All the same, that is quite an interesting point,’ Lettice remarked. ‘The best way to find out things, if you come to think of it, is not to ask questions at all. If you fire off a question, it is like firing off a gun; bang it goes, and everything takes flight and runs for shelter. But if you sit quite still and pretend not to be looking, all the little facts will come and peck round your feet, situations will venture forth from thickets and intentions will creep out and sun themselves on a stone; and if you are very patient, you will see and understand a great deal more than a man with a gun.’

The Flame Trees of Thika is up there with the best and most enjoyable memoirs I’ve read. I can't think of anything quite like it but you might shelve it somewhere near Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals and Eric Newby’s Love and War in the Apennines.

Very interesting book