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Rating: 
Summary: Odd biography of an odd woman
Review: Donelson's work makes very compelling reading. She covers a complex person with an easy to read style and doesn't try to hide any of Blixen's shortcomings. I have a deeper insight into Blixen's works, as well as a more educated opinion of "Out of Africa" the movie. I would recommend this to any fan of Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen.
Rating: 
Summary: For fans of Karen
Review: For anyone with an interest in the life of Dinesen (Karen Blixen), this is a good addition to the library--unless you have read all of Dinesen's letters and books, because this is, verily, a compilation of writings already published--albeit a good compilation. The excerpts from Dinesen's writing can be irksome, however, when the author supposes they are thinly-veiled accounts of her true life. Some of these suppositions require a real leap of faith--especially because, most times, the gender must be transposed for Donelson's theory to hold water. I did not find that the medical notes were the focus of, or detracted from, the book as a whole. I have to ask: why is this book so doggone expensive? It's good, but not worth $35.00, given the fact that nothing new is brought to light.
Rating: 
Summary: Good insights into life of a complex person
Review: I bought this book in preparation for a trip to the Tanzania/Kenya area. I had read some of Dinesen's writings in the past and love the movie, Babette's Feast, based upon one of her short stories. Blixen was a complex person and I've always felt that I didn't get the 'whole picture' in the film 'Out of Africa'. I decided to read this rather than other writings by the author. I was not disappointed. It isn't a simple task to take such a complex personality and distill various facets into a cogent whole. Donelson does a good job at this, particularly giving some insights into the medical contradictions in her life. The one thing that I don't think works quite as well is Donelson's attempts to find the author's own personality/experience in various aspects of her writing. That seemed a bit of stretch at times. But, if you're looking for a good biographical read about a complex personality, and are interested in Eastern Africa during the 20's, you won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Well research
Review: Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen In the movie "Out of Africa" I believe that the writers of the film script missed a wonderful opportunity. In the book "Out of Isak Dinesen in Africa, Karen Blixen's untoldstoy, by Linda Donelson" a reader can find an exciting, wonderful, semsual, complex woman. A woman that is not the same person that appears in the movie. Sometimes, too often movies are made with just the vision of great profits alone, artistry be damned. Too often movie moguls seem to be most interested in maintaining the glory of the lead characters and less interested in telling the great story they have to work with. The Out of Africa Movie would have been so much better with new leading people and a script that didn't have to paint Barron Blixon as such a heavy and could have given a more realistic picture of the marvelous unique man, Denys Finch Hatton. I suspect that the script may have been contaminated by impute from forces that might have been less than insightful. As past history has demonstrated the Moguls some time miss the mark by a long ways. Linda Donelson in her book, which is smooth reading, does a most wonderful job of letting us see inside the rich character of the real people in this story. But not only that, a long the way you taste and feel Arica and you begin to understand the remarkable history , not only of Nairobi and it's surrounding African wonderlands, this book is magic in the way it blends in social history and world events with close personal feelings and experiences.
Rating: 
Summary: Terrific
Review: Reads like a novel. I didn't know much about Karen Blixen before, but I couldn't stop reading this book. I liked the movie "Out of Africa" a lot, and I enjoyed learning the true story behind her life. I see now why they wanted to make a film about her; her life was as good as fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Well research
Review: The difficulty with writing a biography about Karen Blixen lies in the fact that until the latter part of her life, she lived very much as a solitary and intensely private individual. Consequently, the part of her life we are most interested in, her time in Kenya, are closed except for the glimpses one gets from her letters back home. Donelson has done an admirable job of trying to move beyond Blixen's letters. She relies primarily on interpretations of Blixen's books to give more flavor to Blixen's motivations and state of mind. Naturally, it will always be speculative to speak of someone else's intentions. What I appreciated most in this book was the presence of hard numbers. We do get a better sense of the economics of the whole farm deal than with Thurman's biography. Ultimately, the picture that emerges of Blixen is an unflattering one. Donelson downplays Blixen's self-avowed attachment to Africans and points at her neediness and helplessness. I'd recommend this book as a good counterpoint to the unrestrained romance of "Out of Africa". Why did Blixen write "Out of Africa" the way she did? On reading "Out of Isak Dinesen in Africa", as was suggested in the introduction, Blixen wrote the book to convince others that her experience in Africa was not a failure; but perhaps also to convince herself that despite the trauma of personal and financial loss, it was worth it.
Rating:
Summary: Donelson fills the biographic cracks of Blixen's narrative.
Review: There's a very fine line between autobiography, literary non-fiction and a historical novel. Karen Blixen's (Isak Dinesen's) _Out of Africa_ walks that line very carefully. Linda Donelson's _Out of Isak Dinesen in Africa_ does a wonderful job retelling the Karen Blixen story that was obliterated when the middle-aged baroness began to transcribe and transform her Africa experiences. Using a voice similiar to Blixen's own sweeping narration, Donelson tells a story of the story behind the story. She often transcends direct quotation by providing a backdrop of letters and journals and memories that evoke what has always been left unsaid. While a good biography, Donelson's short-coming is her literary interpretation, which sometimes becomes too concrete and narrowed. She seems to read the stories only for their insight on the author's life. While telling the story of the story, Donelson risks diminishing the mystical charm of the story and replacing it with only her own specific meaning. But, Donelson, as a physician, is not writing a literary biography. Her tour de force is her reevaluation of Blixen's medical condition at the end of her life. The story teller ends her days by telling herself the story that has syphillis. Donelson exhumes the sad truth: that Blixen, and not her philandering husband, condemned herself to sphyllis-like symptoms late in life. Donelson's book effectively recreates a life that gets blurred in her own autobiography, muted in other biographies and completely lost in film.
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