Huxley writes lyrically and perceptively about growing up in British East Africa. What I like most about this book is that it captures the wonder and curiosity of a young child quite convincingly. Huxley does a marvelous job bringing the Kikuyu and Masai people to life, and she does an equally impressive job portraying the wildlife and natural environment. This is a book filled with wonder. It's a very sensory book -- one can almost see, hear, smell, and taste Africa.

Another aspect of the book that is especially well done is the depiction of diverse cultural viewpoints -- for the most part, the locals don't understand the British and vice versa. Huxley does a good job of making it clear the origins of these misunderstandings, and she does it evenhandedly, with affection for all the cultures, including a clear-eyed appraisal of how odd British concepts of land ownership must have seemed to, say, the Masai.

I spent some time in Kenya in 1996, when I was just a teen, on a mission trip with my church. We spent most of our time in a tiny village called Kibwezi without electricity (but we had running water!), and we lived in tents for a month while we helped out at the polytechnic we sponsored and helped build new classrooms from native brick. It's one of my most cherished memories, and so I love to read books on Kenya throughout its history.

I absolutely wanted to love this book. I don't know whether it's me or it's the book (this gets really rave reviews here on Goodreads), but I felt myself skimming so many passages, or reading a section and realizing that none of it had sunken in. Perhaps it was because Huxley was a child during these years in British East Africa, but she has a very adult perception of what's going on, especially regarding her parents' friends. There's quite a few instances extramarital attraction, and I have to wonder whether Huxley did pick up on it when she was 6 (because it is possible), or whether she's looking back on her childhood memories with adult eyes and realizing that's what's happening. Also I found it strange that she refers to her parents by their first names in this memoir, yet they're not actually her parents' real names (which are actually Nellie and Jos, not Tilly and Robin).

I did quite enjoy the photographs she included, but the handwritten captions were at times difficult to decipher. I also found the memoir a bit disjointed, with nothing really tying everything together. It reads more like an unconnected collection of anecdotes, and it's perhaps for that reason that I felt it rather slow going.

I much preferred Beryl Markham's West with the Night for a look at colonial Kenya through a child's eyes. Unfortunately this one, its photos and paintings notwithstanding, came as a bit of a disappointment for me.

In an open cart Elspeth Huxley set off with her parents to travel to Thika in Kenya. As pioneering settlers, they built a house of grass, and ate off a damask cloth spread over packing cases. With an extraordinary gift for detail and a keen sense of humor, Huxley recalls her childhood on the small farm at a time when Europeans waged their fortunes on a land that was as harsh as it was beautiful. For a young girl, it was a time of adventure and freedom, and Huxley paints an unforgettable portrait of growing up among the Masai and Kikuyu people, discovering both the beauty and the terrors of the jungle, and enduring the rugged realities of the pioneer life.

Nicely written "memoir" that is clearly fiction as the author was only 6 when the described events occurred. Nevertheless it is likely rooted in her experiences as a young child in Kenya just before the onset of the Great War. Huxley is a good writer with a flair for dialogue. A good read, when taken with a grain of salt.