This is by now a revered classic of a young girl's childhood in the Kenyan countryside under British rule. One reads this and instantly identifies with the colonial family. It's a kind of Swiss Family Robinson story about that magical time in Kenya and thereabouts before World War I when the world seemed to be at the feet of the British King and all globes glowed pink under the Empire. Were people ever so free and happy as the colonialists in Africa who instantly had countless servants, nearly free land, and the British fleet for protection? This is Out of Africa for the middle class, as opposed to Isak Dinesen's aristocratic take on things. Still, the going was good, as Evelyn Waugh once said. Ms Huxley is a charming writer. Required reading for lovers of things African.

The Flame Trees of Thika is a wonderfully written book giving the reader a glimpse of what it must have been like to grow up in Colonial Africa. It is an experience most of us will only have through reading and can only be compared to what it must have been to be one of the early settlers on the American Frontier.

I loved this book. It is beautifully written and is a gripping story on growing up in Africa.

I loved this book. It is beautifully written and is a gripping story on growing up in Africa.

In 1913, a little English girl named Elspeth relocated with her family from their native country to begin a coffee plantation in the wilds of Kenya. Similar in a way to Laura Ingall Wilder's adventurous and sentimental "take" on what was surely a very difficult experience for her family, Elspeth remembers Kenya as a wonderful place and tells us with lingering excitement of her experiences there in the short time before the First World War changed nearly everything. A delightful memoir that is a pleasure every time it's read.

In 1913, a little English girl named Elspeth relocated with her family from their native country to begin a coffee plantation in the wilds of Kenya. Similar in a way to Laura Ingall Wilder's adventurous and sentimental "take" on what was surely a very difficult experience for her family, Elspeth remembers Kenya as a wonderful place and tells us with lingering excitement of her experiences there in the short time before the First World War changed nearly everything. A delightful memoir that is a pleasure every time it's read.

If you are interested in other cultures and ways of life, this book is a treasure. Yes, there has to be a bit of willing suspension of disbelief that this would be the way a child would see and describe things, but if you can live with the fact that this is an adult looking back on her childhood, it's a small thing to get over. The descriptions I found perfect--very vivid, yet not so extensive that they became boring and slowed down the story. And just in what happens and isn't even excused (her parents leave her with neighbors, she accompanies the neighbor's worker to the city, where he leaves her with some more strangers--we'd be calling the police, and her parents are just slightly inconvenienced! And everyone else there has just left their small children at boarding school, not seeing them for years!), the book gives a lot of food for thought about the realities of life in that time and place.

I enjoyed the first two-thirds of this book, but after awhile found all the tiny details tedious. Every noun has six adjectives.

My basic quibble is that it is supposedly from the point of view of a seven year old child, but her thoughts and observations are those of an adult. Is this Huxley remembering at age 46, or is this supposed to be what a seven-year old observed?

At one moment we have a child, playing in the yard with chameleons and the next a child who understands the love affairs of adults.

Well, that's the problem with a memoire that tries to be a novel, and fails, I might add.

What a wonderful book, a wonderful writer, a wonderful world, at least from the child's point of view. Growing up in Kenya, the only child of would-be coffee plantation owners among the Kikuyu tribesmen, Elspeth Huxley comes of age is an unimaginable world which comes to an abrupt end as war begins.

The African landscape and the people in "The Flame Trees of Thika" became so real to me that I grieved when the book ended. Six-year-old Elspeth Huxley's parents and friends became my parents and friends. Elspeth said of Tilly, her perfectionist mother, "it was the details others might not notice that destroyed her, the pleasure of achievement." However Robin, Elspeth's idealistic father, "as a rule, had his mind on distant greater matters always much more promising and congenial than those closer at hand."
Other notable characters included Elspeth's neighbors the beautiful, Lattice and her formal husband, Hereward, the kindly Ian, their house guest, who was in love with Lattice; Juma, their Swahili cook, Sammy their Masai/Kikuyu headman and Njombo, the Kikuju laborer's spokesman.
Huxley has the rare ability to understand and convey the culture and viewpoint of both the European colonial settlers and the Kikuyu and Masai people. The materialistic Europeans were critical of the nomadic Kikuyus who do not aspire to change, tame, possess or improve the countryside. The Kikuya, in turn, were mystified at the white man's sense of property ownership and the concept of theft. For the Kikuyu helping yourself to the possessions of the white man "was no more robbing than to take the honey from wild bees."
At the heart of the story is the beauty and the challenge of life in Africa in the early 20th Century.

strikingly similar to dineson's `out of africa', `flame trees' is a woman-in-colonial-africa's autobiographical memoir, written even more cleanly and elegantly, though from a girl's view. just like dineson, there's only the trace of real plot driving things along, but nonetheless the well-described observations of life on a remote african farm combined with a certain curiousity about how things will end up are compelling enough to carry this book along in a very satisfying way. if not already clear, these two books make very nice companions, and huxley also wrote a second book that's probably worth a look. &, if you start to hanker for this niche but highly worthwhile genre of rare `adventurous great women writers of the mid-20th century' check out my listmania list.
postscript: i recently stumbled onto the sequel, 'the mottled lizard', which is seemlessly more of the same great writing. absolutely worth the read if you enjoyed thika.

I absolutely adore this book. Huxley is one of the all time great writers. Her style is simple, and her stories are endearing and sensitive. The setting of colonial Kenya including the plight of the family struggle to settle in East Africa, provides all the material necessary to create a classic. And Huxley does not dissappoint. A pleasure to read and savour - many times over.

This book is a real literary treasure. I read it first as a teenager. It astonished me then, with its unique portrayal of Africa. Who could fail to love the African wilderness and its diverse people after reading The Flame Trees of Thika?! Africa seen through Huxley's youthful eyes is given a magical quality I have never again encountered (though BBC came close to portraying it in their rendition of this book). And it continues to astonish me now, twenty years later (oh dear, I have dated myself). The spectacular visual imagery from that book are a treasured keepsake, and the book itself is nothing less than a 20th Century masterpiece. It is a priceless gem and well worth the cost.

I saw the TV adaptation several years ago and bought the book in preparation for a trip to Northern Tanzania. I have enjoyed the book very much -- particularly the quiet detail about Elspeth's family (she somehow seems to tell a lot about her parents without going into verbal detail), the Kikuyu and other African peoples she encountered as a child, and her parents' European counterparts in the district. Well written and engrossing.

I was amazed at the detailed observations and understanding of Elspeth as she arrives and becomes exposed to African life. I learned a lot about the "little things" in the day to day life of the people she was exposed to. She also showed a good contrast between Britsh thinking and lifestyle and African thinking and lifestyle. The only complaint that I have is that the writing seemed a little dry and tedious at times.