I just was remained of this book by Jan V. Beth and I read this years ago and just loved it. I must pull it again

This book was just okay. I was expecting great adventure and animal encounters, but it was light on adventure and the animals were either a mention or in the context of hunting them or taking them on as pets. There was a lot of interaction with the other people who came to Africa to find their fortune, which was interesting, but not what I was expecting. It was interesting to learn about some of the interactions between the different native African tribes; and the interactions between the white interlopers and the natives. Some of the cultural misunderstandings and frustrations had humorous moments.

Really lovely. She was able to capture her childhood recollections and express them without much adult overlay. Just very straightforward, as a child would be.

I loved the series of this on the tv with Holly Aird when I was about 14 years old It tells the true story of a Victorian family moving to Kenya to start growing coffee. It centres on a young girl , and her experiences with animals and the locals. The brutality of her new life is fascinating. I enjoyed it many years later when I visited Kenya and we drove past Thika!

The most intriguing aspect of this book are the historic photos. The stories themselves wreak of privilege, audacity, and colonial exploitation. Who shoots eagles on hunting expeditions for entertainment?! That’s more savage than the so-called “natives.” There was great need back then for a cultural anthropologist to teach these white hypocrites respect and decency. I wish the Maasai had driven these folks out of the land upon first arrival.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I think she did a good job of portraying life in Thika from a child's point of view, her little interests and confusions, but leaving enough information that the reader can understand what was actually going on. I was also pleasantly surprised at her journalistic style, not really passing jusdgement, simply reporting the stories as she understood them. It's sweet and an interesting look into a Scottish family's life homesteading in Africa before WWI. I plan to read more of her books, and will also look for something from the African point of view.

A delightful memoir of an African childhood. How times have changed!

Do you know the eighties series starring Hayley Mills? I remember watching it with Mum, but all I really remember is the African setting, and a minor character called Lettice. This is the true story of a small English family who move to Kenya to start a coffee plantation. They're real pioneers, encounter lots of difficulties, and work closely with the indigenous people.

The Flame Trees of Thika, a tale in which said trees are barely mentioned and also not native to the land of Thika.

I must preface the only reason I read this book was because I’m obsessed with the 1981 miniseries which I recently stumbled upon at our local library. I watched the episodes several times and then realized I must own my own DVD set followed by reading Elspeth Huxley’s story.

I will be honest in saying, if I didn’t love the series so much I would’ve never bothered with the book. Even with my curiosity bursting I found the first several chapters quite monotonous. I persisted forth and I believe during the seventh or ninth chapter I finally began to feel satisfied. It was a novelty experience reading through having loved the film as I do. I feel the producers very closely matched the film to the book which made readership all the more enjoyable.

What an African exposé both the book and film reveal! I never knew how ridiculously superstitious the Africans are. I was horrified in many respects having learnt for example of their needless animal sacrifices, cannibalism and not caring at all for an animal’s suffering. There was much more despicable behavior I won’t broach here. However I won’t fail to mention how in African shambas the women do all the work while the men sit around much of the day. The most shocking whopper of all was the circumcision of women by force without anesthetic at that! I am also distraught over the colonialists shooting game for sport!!

I’ve read several other reviews, most everyone carries on about how horribly the natives were treated by colonialists. This is rubbish. Many English treated the Africans well, aiding them often for example, after careless African mothers let their babies be “accidentally” burnt near a fire pit. Africans were full of parasites and disease; the English often provided them with care and medicine.

To finish on a bright note, I am pleased I read the book because it will make re-watching the miniseries even better. The opening orchestra of the show takes my breath away! I had to buy the LP and play it often as it deeply touches my spirit essence.

My favorite quotes of the story are as follows however please refrain from reading them if you’d prefer to save them as surprises:

p.110
“In our circle of cool shade, as if under a rustling green parasol, we inhabited a different world from the sun-soaked Kikuyu ridges that stretch to meet a far, enormous sky, blue as a wild delphinium and decorated with vigorous clouds that threw shadows as large as islands on to the hillsides and valleys. It was as if we sat in a small, dark auditorium gazing out at a stage which took in most of the world.”

p.111
“I didn’t come to civilize anyone. I came to escape from the slavery one has at home if one doesn’t inherit anything. I mean to make a fortune if I can. Then I shall go home and spend it. If that helps to civilize anyone I shall be delighted, but surprised.”

p.112
“We lay under the tree in silence, watching the sky wink at us through gently-moving leaves and hearing the rustle of heavy-seeded grasses, the far tinkle of goat-bells, the never-ceasing chirruping of crickets that seemed to concentrate the essence of heat and brightness into sound. In this high afternoon, human noises were suspended and you could almost hear the earth drinking in the hard sunlight, and the frail, dry pattering of insects’ feet.”

p.112-113
“On Tilly’s dressing-table stood a little pin-tray made of mother-of-pearl whose cool, smooth, iridescent lustre, haunted by the ghosts of colours, was the nearest match that I had seen to Lettice’s complexion.”

p.118
“ ‘Look at the sunset: time can never be wasted when there are such sights to look at, and such things to enjoy.’
The sunset was, indeed, spectacular. The whole western sky was aflame with the crimson of the heart of a rose. Deep-violet clouds were stained and streaked with red, and arcs of lime-green and saffron-yellow swept across the heavens. It was all on such a scale that the whole world might have been burning.
‘Wonderful, but extravagant,’ Lettice said. ‘There is no restraint in it.’
‘Yes, it is the sort of sky that angry Valkyries might ride across,’ Ian agreed.
‘There is more beauty in a butterfly’s wing or a seashell than in that sunset; but it has a barbaric splendour in it, and an element of terror.’
They went on talking about the sunset and ideas it suggested to them, which were many; each mind fertilized the other. I did not listen, for the crimson sky, the golden light streaming down the valley, and then it’s obliteration by the dusk, as if some great lamp had been turned down in the heavens, filled me with the terrible melancholy that sometimes wrings the hearts of children, and can never be communicated or explained. It was as if the day, which was unique, and could never come again, had been struck down like the duiker and lay there bleeding, and then was swallowed into oblivion; as if something in each one of us had died with it, and could never be recalled. I felt it desperately important that the moment should be halted, the life of the day preserved, its death indefinitely postponed, and that the memory of every instant, of every fleck of colour in that tremendous sky, should be branded on my mind so as to become as much a part of my existence as an eye or hand.”

p.171
“They were gone, marching to far romantic places beyond the last farm, the ultimate shamba, where the wild game of Africa had their wide plains and secret reeded water-holes all to themselves, and when you camped among the thorns beside a dry sand-river, and dug for moisture in the hot sand, it might be that you were treading where no man, white or black, had ever set his foot before. It was a moment to lift the heart, but also to fill the mind with anguish because the others were going, and I was left behind, and would never see these far imagination-torturing places, or taste the solitudes where nature keeps her pure and intricate balance free from the crass destructiveness of man.”

p.63
“I dreamt I was back in Norway, the country that I like best in all the world. We spent one summer fishing in the fjords, and Hereward hunted elk in forests which smelt of moss and resin. The fjords, how wonderful they were! The black forest was like a bear’s furry pelt coming right down to the edge of the dark, still water, and from the house we stayed in we could watch the fishing boats come in with their catch, and see the men wave to wives and friends in little white toy-like houses, so clean, so neat and somehow brave, pressed in by all those mountains and forests. . . . Once we saw the aurora borealis, it lit the sky like some tremendous ghostly signal for the end of the world, and everything was silent, even the dogs. . . . Well, there’s plenty of beauty here, and splendour, but it doesn’t make your heart swell and almost burst, it seems to compress it into a little button and make it hard and tight. Now I think I’m talking gibberish; you must try to forgive me, it’s such a treat to have someone to talk to about something besides dead animals and crops and how dreadfully inefficient the natives are at everything, which I’m sure is true.”

This is an excellent memoir. To my ear, the English is perfect and the storytelling is enchanting. I learned so much about prewar Africa, human nature and the way indigenous people think. If Elspeth had been given another life, she would have made a fine anthropologist, psychologist and geographer.
I rate this book highly.

I'm so glad that I picked up an illustrated edition of this book, as it helped with my wild imagination while reading of Elspeth's adventures. KUDOS to the illustrator Francesca Pelizzoli.
Elspeth Huxley and her family travel to Thika, East Africa in 1907 to cultivate coffee crops. They had no idea what was in store for them. To read about the tribes of Africa and their customs and all the crazy adventures, not to mention the hardships was just so intriguing. A really good read that had me going to my dictionary more than once (I like new words!) I'm definitely passing this book on....

I very much enjoyed Elspeth's stories It was more a memoir of the Dutch immigrant and the people around her so while it lacked a passion.for Africa it abounded in a child's innocent adventures trying to be a kid among grownups.