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Originally Posted by WT Sharpe
I thought about that as I read the book, especially after such comments on Goodreads about how the author was a "legend in her own mind" and etc., but decided to read the book as straightforward literature and came away feeling that this was one hell of a good yarn. How much is true I have no idea; I assume that most, if not all of it, is. Moreover, it didn't strike me as braggadocio, though I'm sure the author had a healthy supply of self-defense confidence.
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There are some things I know to be untrue and others I merely suspect were created for effect. From the beginning, art trumps accuracy, when she creates an idyll with only herself and her father, she ignores the presence of her brother and a governess and nearby cousins.
Quote:
Originally Posted by WT Sharpe
I found her attitude toward Paddy to be revealing. After the lion nearly killed her, she still referred to him as a good lion who had done what he could about being a tame lion and refused to condemn him for his "one mistake" in which she was, in the words of Bishon Singh, "moderately eaten by the large lion."
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I know she was a product of her time and class, but one wishes she were more enlightened about the Africans, at least in retrospect. It's troubling that she celebrates how she violated sacred ritual by partaking in the blood of the bull before the boar hunt, for example. This is one of those cases where I'm a little doubtful of her veracity. Surely the Africans can't have welcomed it. So did she make it up, or were they powerless to object when the bwana's daughter insisted?