Brilliant from start to finish, Spirits is an impressive debut and will certainly have you on an astral trip through the cosmos. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowi erer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. From the moment I read even a few sentences, West with the Night took powerful hold of my imagination. This is a banquet you will not want to miss as it ignites all your senses and satisfies while leaving you wanting more. The luscious writing of this novel will transport you to the dry rolling hills of Kenya and quench your thirst after a long drought.

If you were half awake in 2011 (or 2012 or 2013), you couldn’t have avoided Paula McLain’s runaway best seller, “The Paris Wife. Serve " ham poached in champagne with tiny jewel-like strawberries and tart, plump pomegranate seeds , a mushroom croustade with truffles and cream . p. 329) Some people would say that you have to give your whole self away or put all of your heart into something or it won't be good.Still, I hoped for a different experience when presented with a copy of McLain’s latest offering, “Circling the Sun. But I really wish I could - so I could give a little sense into how lush and descriptive the writing is that makes you feel as if you are standing there on that farm in Kenya , or can feel what Beryl is feeling and convince people that they should read this book . Circling the Sun by Paula McLain is about the childhood and early adulthood of Beryl Clutterback Markham who was born in England, but shortly after, her family moved to British East Africa (Kenya) to establish a farm and a horse training business.

I had some reservations about McLain's depiction of Hemingway's first wife -- Hadley Richardson -- in The Paris Wife, but hats off to MacLain for her depiction of Beryl.Blixen seems a sympathetic character here; frankly I liked the fictional Beryl Markham here less than I liked the real Beryl Markham who wrote Wes …more Ms. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Set on her own two feet early, she is barely schooled but precociously brave and wired for physical challenges—a trait honed by her childhood companion Kibii (a lifelong friend and son of a local chief).

Served " tinned chestnuts and sugared almonds " like Beryl saw in the window when she went to London. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. He was so busy training horses and trying to make a living that it seems he almost forgot about her. A number of books have tried to shine the light on this British daredevil who, in many ways, was ahead of her time – Straight on Till Morning by Mary Lovell, The Lives of Beryl Markham by Errol Trzebinski, and Markham's own book, West with the Night (which some say it was ghostwritten, a rumor that McLain says is both ridiculous and insulting) – and McLain's tribute does this too, highlighting the rebellious nature of Markham; her own brand of feminism that speaks both to why she stood out in her time and how she is relatable today.She’ll have him, too, and much enjoyment derives from guessing how that script, and other intrigues, will play out in McLain’s retelling. Beryl commented that she could sleep anywhere and then the story proceeds with the account of two nights of interrupted sleep (one because of rain and one because of Denys and Karen). She refuses to stop riding when she becomes pregnant, and this is held up as an example of an uncompromising lifestyle. The writing is repetitive and banal and nowhere as evocative of Africa as the blurb would have you believe.

There was a devastating situation in Beryl's life that -if happened to me --I don't think I could breathe. The author of The Paris Wife takes us to the heart of another true story: set in 1920s colonial Kenya, Circling the Sun is about an unforgettable woman who lives by nobody's rules but her own. Beryl’s descriptions of her African childhood, colonial Kenya in all its seasons, and her extraordinary adventures fairly leap off the page—but more striking to me is the spirit behind the words. I felt myself drawn to him, the polished look of his skin, and the strong length of his thigh beneath his shuka,” she says of Kibii, her onetime childhood playmate, now grown all tall, muscular and gleaming. In my summer reading quest to read biographical novels featuring interesting women, I chose Circling The Sun by Paula McClain.Around this time, Beryl falls in with a notorious bad crowd known as the Happy Valley, a group of wealthy English-born expatriates who live a hedonistic lifestyle, existing in a drug-induced haze. After a sexual encounter that is more than a little predatory on Finch's part, he ignores her affections, causing Beryl to become obsessed with him.