I Dreamed of Africa

Rating:
Summary: Self-Absorbed and Tiresome
Review: What can you say about a woman who doesn't even bother to let the reader know that her husband's first wife died in the car accident that she herself was injured in--until fifty pages later? Or skims over the fact that she was having an affair except by saying that her lover's life was complicated, and he was not "free?" Occasionally while writing about the animals or the Africans (though even there she has the patronizing attitude that they were "innocent" before the coming of Europeans) she rises above her tedious sketches of her oh so many colorful (and rich) friends and dutiful "poetical" descriptions of the landscape, but these moments are few. The overblown hyperbole of her relationships--her perfect children, the mystical relationships with her lovers--made me want to gag. Only the visceral honesty about her son's and husband's deaths, such as mopping up the blood from her son's corpse with one of his sister's diapers, got this book two stars. The Flame Trees of Thika is a much better book, or perhaps it is easier to read about the priviledged European in Africa after she's safely gone!