Circling the Sun: A Novel Paperback – May 31, 2016

After the success of her novel, The Paris Wife, Paula McLain brings us another fictional autobiography of a complicated, strong woman. I don’t know how Paula picks the women she depicts but she does a great job in selecting three-dimensional, complicated, intriguing characters.Beryl is raised in colonial Kenya, born to an English famous horse trainer, she explores the landscapes of Kenya with her friends, growing free and falling in love with nature and horses. When her mother leaves back to England, she is left with her father who doesn’t quite know what to do with her. He tries to put her in school and make a lady out of her, but instead, once the family farm, Green Hills, falls to trouble, she ends up marrying at the age of sixteen.Feeling suffucated in her marriage and having a few affairs with other men in the colony, Beryl struggles for her freedom, the freedom she enjoyed as a child.THe beauty of this book comes from its characters. Even though the reader would not agree with every decision Beryl makes, one understands it and her struggle. Throguhout the book, the reader is rooting for her and her happiness and comes to the realization that Beryl is a free spirit that cannot be fenced or domesticated. She becomes the first woman trainer in Africa and also the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. Her adventurous spirit resonates through every single page of the book and, in fact, she cannot be confined to those pages.In addition to Beryl, the secondary characters in this book, also molded after their real-life figures, are absolutely wonderful. McLain takes her time developing each and every one of the characters. Even minor ones who seem to have no effect on Beryl become central forces. It is expected, as the colony has a feeling of being infinite but also so small that there are no secrets. Everyone seems to be in love with someone other than the people they should.There are times in the book were the reader feels hopeless for Beryl, nothing seems to be going right. But by the end of the book the reader is left satisfied, if maybe a little frustrated that they hadn’t heard of Beryl before. Beryl was way ahead of her times and although she definitely makes choices that are questionable, one can admire her strong will and her full life.Like The Paris Wife, Paula McLain takes a female character out of history that seems to have been forgotten. She explores not only the events that shaped their lives but their deep desires and fears as well. Circling the Sun is a fantastic novel. Paula McLain’s writing is absolutely beautiful and poetic. The lyricism and beautiful flow of everything carries the reader from one page or the other. Even in the subject does not intrigue you, her writing will capture you and not let you go until you reach the last page.

I finished McLain’s Circling the Sun just his morning. I enjoyed it more than The Paris Wife, but maybe my preference is related to an interest the time period and specific characters, not to mention the engaging setting description and imagery in Circling the Sun. I had loved reading Beryl Markham’s West with the Night and Dinesen’s (Karen von Blixen’s) Out of Africa over 25 years ago, so revisiting the characters and Africa of the time period was a treat. Be SURE you read the prologue and the epilogue as they frame the story. The author’s note is worth reading, so don’t skip it when you finish the book. If you have an interest in Markham and the time period, in addition to reading her and Dinesen’s books, I also highly recommend Markham’s biography by Mary S. Lovell Straight on Til Morning. (BTW, Lovell’s Amelia Earhart biography is excellent too.)McLain writes the story as a first person memoir, and this works very well to get the reader inside Beryl’s head as a young, wild, undisciplined English girl raised by her father on a farm in Africa in a place and time in which society limited women’s roles, even in this remote locale. McLain’s descriptive imagery seemed a little overdone in passages, but it did allow the reader to see Africa and people the way Beryl might have, and I found the poetic quality of it pleasurable. Also, I could hear the time period, the author’s own Whitmanesque love of nature (like the poem Denys Finch Hatten reads in the book), not to mention echoes of Beryl Markham and Karen von Blixen’s (Isak Dinesen) books in McLain’s novel. As a more literary reader, I appreciated this. Still, whether one is a literary reader or not, Circling the Sun is enjoyable reading for contemporary readers and introduces these larger-than-life people to a new generation.Some readers have complained that Beryl Markham was not a very likable character; to that I say, Beryl Markham was a highly flawed person which makes for an INTERESTING character. Larger-than-life people typically have major personal flaws, but their lives are often intriguing. Think of every hard-boiled detective, every Shakespearean character, every drama or tragedy – they feature flawed people. In McLain’s book, we learn how Markham’s childhood created the foundation for the fascinating, but emotionally broken woman she would become. And, let’s face it – people are still intolerant of women who live their lives, particularly their love lives, like men do.McLain opened the main story in Part One (her three parts would align beautifully with a great screenplay for a mini-series which I hope someone produces) with the line “Before Kenya was Kenya, when it was millions of years old and yet still somehow new, . . . “ she creates the same reflective tone from the first sentence just as Dinesen/vonBlixen did Out of Africa, “I once had a farm in Africa . . .” Markham’s book West with the Night begins “How is it possible to bring order our of memory? I should like to begin at the beginning, patiently, like a weaver at his loom. I should like to say, ‘this is the place to start; there can be no other.’ But there are a hundred places to start . . .” Also, I mention this first line of McLain’s book because later in the novel, Denys invites Beryl to Karen von Blixen’s place, but tells her she must bring a story. All the stories have to begin: “Before Kenya was Kenya, when it was millions of years old and yet still somehow new . . .”McLain’s novel Circling the Sun tells a new version of an old story in a way that will engage, educate, and interest historical fiction and contemporary readers.West with the NightStraight on Till Morning: The Life of Beryl MarkhamOut of Africa: and Shadows on the Grass

More than 10 years ago, I read West with the Night, which I loved. It is such an intriguing story that I wished I had learned more about the characters. In this book, the author provides a wonderful and credible accounting of what might have occurred. She evidently deeply researched the events and characters to provide context and fill in some of the gaps. It was well written and the Audible narration was good.