strange and random happenstance

Circling the Sun by Paula McLain
ARC Provided by the Publisher
Published by: Ballantine Books
Publication Date: July 28th, 2015
Format: Hardcover, 384 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy

Beryl Markham would go down in history as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west, but her story began when she was just four-year-old Beryl Clutterbuck and her family came to British East Africa so that her father could train horses. Within a year her mother and older brother returned to England but Beryl stayed with her father in Africa. She grew up wild and free, in love with the horses, the land, and the natives. Over the years her father attempted to tame her with governesses and schooling, but Beryl was too willful and wild. That would change when her father announced that he was being forced to sell their farm. He couldn't afford to keep it and had agreed to take a job in South Africa. At sixteen Beryl had a hard choice to make. She could either go with her father or she could accept the proposal of marriage that their neighbor, Jock Purves, had put on the table. Beryl reluctantly agreed to marry Jock, hoping that her life would continue on in much the same why it had. She was wrong. Beryl bucked at the constraints of marriage and soon took off. She left her husband behind and took to training horses, eventually becoming the first licensed female racehorse trainer. She had many ups and downs in her career training horses and in her love life. But it was the love triangle between her, Karen Blixen, and Denys Finch Hatton that shaped her most. Denys was the love of her life and he was the one who first showed her how to fly. And oh, how she soared.

Beryl Markham is an interesting character to read about for those intrigued by Kenya during it's heyday. Because she arrived in the colony at such a young age with her family and stayed there for much of her life her story is like getting the best of Elspeth Huxley and Isak Dinesen. You get the pioneering beginning and the decadent lifestyle Kenya became notorious for all with one person. Add to this that it is written by a modern writer, Circling the Sun has more approachable prose than the dense morass of pretension that tended to flow out of Isak Dinesen. This book is a good starting off point for those wanting to know more about this fascinating time period, but I can only hope that after dipping in they'll dig deeper. Because for everything this book gets right it gets ten things wrong. It presents an easily digestible and palatable version of events that doesn't uncover the whole truth. Circling the Sun is like the Lifetime Movie version of what really happened in Kenya, stupid framing device and all. Yes, it is hard to get at the truth of what really happened during this time period seeing as the Happy Valley Set were all highly literate and writing their own skewed version of events, but there's just something so flat about this book in the end that you can't help wanting there to have been something more, some insight.

For someone who broke all the rules and was a woman ahead of her time McLain's depiction of Beryl is just flat. There is no passion, no life breathed into her. You forge no connection to McLain's subject. She never becomes alive, forever staying as ink on a page, a dry dusty woman who would have been forgotten by history if not for Ernest Hemingway's interest in West with the Night. At the beginning of the book with Beryl's childhood you feel an inkling that this will be an epic story full of insight, up there with Huxley's The Flame Trees of Thika. But as the book progresses it starts to rely heavily on telling us not showing us, the death knell of any story. As Beryl is trying to regain control of her life it almost feels as if McLain is channeling this desire for control to the point where the construct of Beryl is not even letting the reader in. This makes the book become flatter and flatter and more atonal as you progress. What little interest you had in Beryl is completely gone as she is written out of significance by McLain's bland storytelling. At the very end of the book there's a last ditch effort by McLain, perhaps realizing that she had failed to do Beryl justice, where she speechifies about freedom, but it's too late. It comes across as preachy and fails entirely to get the point across she was attempting to make.

Yet what I did find interesting is that McLain was actually, for a time, able to make topics that I would normally hate interesting, IE horses and flying. McLain might not have captured Beryl, but she did capture the spirit of horses and racing that predominated Kenyan society. I have never been a horse person, and never will be, though I will admit to liking the spirit of the races that grip the country every May with the Kentucky Derby. The horses and how Beryl rehabilitated several and got her license, that was all oddly fascinating. What I found bizarre though was that for a woman known for flying there was a disproportion in the book. McLain lavishes so much on the training of the horses by the time she gets to Beryl and her flying it's kind of like, there's no time left, I'm wrapping it up, story's over. Say what? I just read hundreds of pages about mud near a certain lake and how it could help a horse with injured limbs yet Beryl gets up in a plane and it's all, whatever, you don't need to know about this. Seeing as Beryl was forever seeking freedom, wouldn't that translate well into writing about flying? Not to mention her freakin' book she wrote on it!?! But as I said before, for every one thing that was right another ten things were wrong.

What I found most wrong and strongly objectionable was the depiction of Karen Blixen, who most people will know by her pen name, Isak Dinesen. Because of her book Out of Africa people have this very romanticized version of Karen Blixen that lives in their head. This wasn't helped by the movie. Personally, I don't get it. The book isn't well written. Period. This isn't a point I'm ever going to argue with people because in my mind just pick up the book and read it and if you can actually finish it, I'm sure you'll come around to my POV. Sure, the movie might be pretty, but Redford? Really? The reason I mention the reverence for the book and it's author is that it felt like McLain had a need to preserve the integrity of Blixen instead of telling the truth. She handles Blixen with kid gloves, Beryl is always talking about how wonderful she is and how guilty she felt for being trapped in a love triangle with her. Here's the truth. Everyone in Kenya couldn't stand Blixen. They viewed her as a pretentious pill who always thought she knew better than everyone else. This isn't just from all the history books I've read, a family friend knew her. So I would have far more preferred a bit of truth-telling than coddling the image of an author that in my mind doesn't really even warrant that title.

But there's a lot of truth omitted in this book... This is in fact where I finally lost patience with Circling the Sun. I felt like McLain was forever circling the truth but was never brave enough to come out and say it. She kept Blixen the paragon her readers believed her to be and made Beryl a little more... I don't know how to say this, relatable by bending the truth? Palatable? Because McLain makes Beryl a hard working woman who occasionally falls prey to her desires, and that's not true. The scene that really got me was Beryl's disgust at Idina Sackville's sex party. Beryl was actually a very promiscuous woman. Now I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, especially given the time and the climate of Kenya, it was basically expected, and she might indeed have had issues with Idina's party. Yet McLain makes it seem that Beryl is a bit of a prude. Which is anything but the truth. The truth is she had sexual relations with many of the men in her life, yet here the truth is bent to make her relationships with these men seem just friendships. Oh, and the straw that broke the camel's back? Yes, McLain discusses in detail the abortion of Denys's baby after their first sexual encounter. But does she talk about the later abortion? The fact that when Denys died she was pregnant again? Nope. McLain doesn't. And in the end that one final omission made me throw up my hands and view this book NOT as historical fiction of a real person but pure fantasy. That isn't what I read this book for. I wanted insight, truths, to get under the skin of Beryl. If that's what you want as well, look elsewhere.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Africa, Backlog Bonanza, Beryl Markham, Circling the Sun, Denys Finch Hatton, Elspeth Huxley, Ernest Hemingway, Isak Dinesen, Karen Blixen, Kenya, Out of Africa, Paula McLain, West with the Night

Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
Published by: Random House
Publication Date: 1937
Format: Hardcover, 400 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy (different edition then one reviewed)

"Okay, moment of slight cattiness here. Before I’d started researching The Ashford Affair, I knew Dinesen only through her own writings and, of course, the extremely sympathetic portrayal in the movie, Out of Africa. It was fascinating—like being let in on someone’s gossip circle—to read the reactions of others in that Happy Valley crowd, and then go back to Dinesen’s writing, knowing that many of her neighbors found her a bit of a pill. I’m afraid I’ll never be able to look at Out of Africa quite the same way again…." - Lauren Willig

"I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills." Karen Blixen, writing under the nom de plume, Isak Dinesen, lived in Africa for many years, till she finally had to give up her coffee plantation and head home to Denmark, were she became a famous writer for her memoirs of her time in Kenya. The non linear vignettes of life on her farm capture a time and place that she knew, even at the time, would soon be gone. From her connection to young Kikuyus and a menagerie of animals, to the luminaries of the Happy Valley passing through her door, she captures this world of long ago.

I will fully admit that my reaction to finally finishing Out of Africa was not the most mature, seeing as it involved me yelling "suck it Dinesen" and then thinking about her getting an STD (which she had by the way) as justice for me having to read this book. If it hadn't been so late at night, I'm sure there might have even been a victory dance... but as it was late and I was giddy, it was best to leave well enough alone. But I shall warn you now, this is going to be a ranty review because this book is designated a "Classic." Capitol "C" and all. WHY!?! I mean, really, WTF people, it took me YEARS to get through this book, and I'm not talking metaphorically or figuratively but in all honesty, literally.

Let us now segue into the past and my history with Out of Africa. My love of Africa, the country, never to be confused with this book, I think has to be somewhat hereditary, because I take after my mom. She loves Africa. Quite a few years back she went on a reading safari and picked up all the great books from the Kenyan Happy Valley Days. Beryl Markham, Isak Dinesen, Elspeth Huxley, they all came into our house and became common names, which was very handy when I was looking for copies of their books for Ashford April. During this time was when I first saw the movie Out of Africa, watching the whole movie with my mother ranting about how Robert Redford was in NO WAY like Denys Finch-Hatton. But she did concede that Isak's husband Bror was perfectly cast as was Isak, or should I call her by her real name, Karen Blixen?

I will warn you now, watching the movie gives you no sense of what the book is like. The movie is a romanticized version of Karen Blixen's life, not a translation of the life she wrote about in her book which is more vignettes then an autobiography. A little after first seeing the movie, Random House came out with a facsimile 1st edition to celebrate their 75th anniversary. I am a sucker for beautiful books, and seeing as my mom loved this book (which she is now taking back because of my harsh questioning) I bought it and tried to read it. Tried is the optimum word, because I didn't even get more then half way through before I abandoned it. Now, several years later with the book languishing I vowed to finish reading it for Ashford April. In fact, I kind of put it on the reading list, not because of any real connection to Lauren Willig's wonderful book, but because I was daring myself to finish it. Well, I finished it... she says dubiously.

So now we all get to the "meat" of the review. Why did I hate this book so much that I envisioned hurling it out a window or engulfing it in flames? Firstly, she can't write. Isak Dinesen can not form a coherent sentence to save her soul. Therefore my earliest fantasies regarding this book involved me traveling in time to beat her to death with a grammar book. She has sentences that make no sense, commas randomly inserted into the oddest of places and a narrative the jumps so much it's like she has ADD. Now she claimed that her Syphilis was fully cured... one must wonder though if it hadn't maybe rotted out her brain, just because rarely have a seen a published book so badly written. Sure I've read my fair share of bad books, but at least those people could write a sentence. It might have been a dull or boring or insipid sentence, but it was a sentence at least.

Yet her inability to write, while a hurdle, is not the main problem I had. I just couldn't stand her as a person. Now I'm sure you have a friend or an acquaintance who is so self absorbed and obsessed that they see everything in the world through themselves. I'm not talking about seeing everything through their eyes, but that they actually see everything in the world in relation to themselves and how it affects them. You might be having a conversation with them and if the topic doesn't effect them in anyway, they randomly interject to change the topic to one that interests them, mainly, themselves. They can never be objective and they live in their own little world, one where I imagine a statue of themselves at the center and then lots of roller coasters, like in the episode of Red Dwarf where Kryten makes the Rimmer Experience using Arnold's own diaries. The world is their own, and that is how Isak sees it. She can't talk about a Ngoba without going on about how it's in her honor. She can't talk about at trip into Nairobi, unless it's about her selflessness helping people at the hospital with rides round the country in her car. I can see why everyone thought her an insufferable twat. It was all "me, me, me" and this book bears it out. Can you imagine actually being her "friend?" I personally would leave Africa to get away from her...

I'm sure that right about now there are several people going, "but this is my favorite book" and "how could you say those things about this Classic of literature." Well, because I'm telling it as I see it. This book is a very polarizing book, you either love it or you hate it. I am firmly in the hate camp. Why did she have to keep comparing everything to the sea in very awkward metaphors? It's not just that the book is racist, which it is, but you have to make allowances for the eras Imperialist mentality, it's that it's badly written by a narcissist. Even in Isak's life she was polarizing, there were those who loved and hated her. Hemingway loved her, but I have a feeling this has more to do with that she killed things then her prose, whereas the artist Owen Gromme, who was a friend of my families, thought she was a self absorbed snob. Personally, this book made me realize that I should raise every other book I've ever read on Africa a full star and that you're better off reading any other book on Africa then this self proselytising memoir. I'd even read The Bolter again... and yes, I'm being serious.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Arnold Rimmer, Ashford April, Beryl Markham, Elspeth Huxley, Happy Valley, Isak Dinesen, Karen Blixen, Lauren Willig, Out of Africa, Red Dwarf, STD, The Ashford Affair, The Bolter

Mark of the Lion by Suzanne Arruda
Published by: NAL
Publication Date: December 5th, 2006
Format: Paperback, 346 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

"Here’s a closely guarded secret for you: the odds are that, on most topics and time periods, historical fiction authors tend to draw from a roughly similar pool of sources. (I say “most” because there are some periods for which there are oodles of accessible sources available, which stirs up the pool a bit.) When I read Mark of the Lion, after several months immersed in the history of British East Africa, I was deeply amused to recognize people, places, events and anecdotes. There are times when the past can feel like a very small place…." - Lauren Willig

Jade del Cameron is a plucky girl. Growing up in the American West she knows how to handle herself in just about any situation. Yet she is still haunted by her ambulance work in the great war. The insane laughing of the wounded will never leave her, nor will the memory of David. David wanted to marry Jade and have a happily ever after. Jade wasn't sure but didn't really have the chance to decide when David was shot down and died in her arms pleading with her to find his secret half brother and look into his father's suspicious death in Nairobi at the start of the war. Jade takes dying wishes seriously, and with writing work for the magazine The Traveler as cover, she sets out for British East Africa to find out just what is going on.

David's father did indeed die under strange circumstances. How was he mauled to death in a hotel, on the second floor? Africa though is not what Jade expected and it looks like her duty to David might be harder then she thought. Things happen in Africa. Weird things. Everyone just accepts this. Death by animal is common, even if it was in an uncommon location. Here they believe in witches capable of using animals as their familiars to kill. Yet, what if the witches are real? And what if they have taken against Jade?

As Lauren Willig says, "the past can feel like a very small place." This was indeed what I felt upon first cracking open the pages of Mark of the Lion. Having a little African reading extravaganza means that I am reading these books back to back. I try to insert a little something different between the volumes, but to all intents and purposes, I've been living in British East Africa for awhile now, both in fictional and non-fictional works. So therefore hearing anecdotes directly lifted from other books, in particular The Flame Trees of Thika, which I had just finished, seemed a little redundant. I would say this could have been amusing, seeing the same cast of characters through yet another author's eyes, but coming directly after reading the one, it felt a bit like flogging a dead horse. Thankfully Suzanne Arruda soon went off in her own unique direction that was actually inspired by a true tale from Bror von Blixen, the husband of author Isak Dinesen, and the book soon found it's own legs with a dash of danger and more then a little mysticism.

The mysticism is what really drew me into the story. For those who know me there are two obvious categories my reading tastes lean to, firstly is the historical fiction, secondly is the urban fantasy. By bringing in witches and animals controlled by these dark forces, it's like adding a dash of urban fantasy into Kenya's Happy Valley. While of course it's traditional folklore and not fantasy that is feeding the laibon, aka witch, isn't all urban fantasy rooted in folklore? Therefore this book is like the urban fantasy of the day, if the day was 1919. Even in more biographical books like The Flame Trees of Thika, Elspeth Huxley fully admits that whether you believe or not, that sometimes it's better to be open to other things that can not be understood. I love that Suzanne Arruda was willing to embrace the fact that there are just some things that can't be explained away unless you expand your definitions of what is possible and what is impossible. A world where everything can not be neatly compartmentalized and there is room for magic is a world I want to live in.

Now to the nit-picky bit, which little old me can never just skip. Let's talk about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder folks. This is a trap that many modern writers fall prey to. The thing is, while I fully admit that PTSD was around prior to it's official designation in the 1980s; if this were really a book set in 1919, yes Jade would be shell shocked after her work in the war, but there would be the whole "stiff upper lippedness" that had people dealing with it on their own and just carrying on as it were. Sure, you can use the excuse that she's American, so she handles things differently... but I've seen this more and more that any book written by a current writer set after a war the hero or heroine will have textbook PTSD, it's almost rote in mystery books at the moment. It just gets to be a bit much, know what I mean? I like that Arruda used a specific incident in Jade's past to have hyena's trigger her attacks, but still, enough with the PTSD, ok folks?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Ashford April, Bror von Blixen, Elspeth Huxley, Happy Valley, Isak Dinesen, Jade del Cameron, Kenya, Lauren Willig, Mark of the Lion, PTSD, Suzanne Arruda, The Flame Trees of Thika, Urban Fantasy

The Flame Trees of Thika by Elspeth Huxley
Published by:  George Weidenfeld & Nicholson
Publication Date: 1959
Format: Hardcover, 287
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (different edition then one reviewed)

"This book was one of the great, unexpected benefits of researching The Ashford Affair. I’d recommend it to anyone, whether you’re doing background reading for a book set in Kenya or not. It is an utterly charming, fictionalized account of Elspeth Huxley’s childhood in Kenya as her aristocratic parents essayed several largely unsuccessful experiments in farming. As such, it’s a little bit Little House on the Prairie and a little bit Anne of Green Gables with a hearty dollop of retrospective worldly wisdom." - Lauren Willig

In the late twenties, Kenya became known for it's "Happy Valley." A place of paradise and pleasure, where you could start your life over a make a fortune in coffee or dairy. But to those who settled there before the first world war, it was an entirely different world. In 1913 Elspeth Huxley's family moved to Thika to start a coffee plantation. They had heard there where fortunes to be made... only coffee takes at least five years to bring in any crop, and that's if everything goes right. With insects that would make anyone's skin crawl, to fighting amongst their workers who belonged to waring tribes, to curses and black magic, life is far harder than any of them would have expected. Yet the friendships they make with their workers, who are loyal in their own way, and with their fellow settlers, leads to an interesting and diverse community that Elspeth grows up in.

The beauty of Africa, while harsh, still is inspiring. Elspeth sadly reminiscences that the days when the plains would be covered with a plethora of game and where there were some areas in which you were probably the first human ever to set foot was soon to end. The settlers would change the landscape forever, but luckily, there was an inquisitive little five year old who saw Thika for the magical world it was and forever preserved it in these pages. 

A few years back I was driving back with a friend through southern Missouri from another friends wedding in Arkansas when I spied a billboard for the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum in Mansfield. As you can imagine, he was a bit dismayed by the fact that he now had to go on a tour of Laura's Rocky Ridge Farm. Before the house tour, which hand some interesting carpentry thanks to Laura's husband Almonso, there was a nice museum to wander through. In one of the cases with pride of place was Laura's own guns, which she used often to kill small game. That's when it struck me, the reality of Laura's life versus her books. Thankfully I was not the other two tourists who where having issues coming to gripes with the fact that the tv show was pure fiction, while Laura's books where, not fiction, but her interpretation of her life.

The Little House Books had presented a a sort of glorious golden childhood of living in sod houses and tapping maple syrup. Right about now you might be wondering why I'm going on about Laura Ingalls Wilder in a book review for Elspeth Huxley, but the truth is that Huxley's book, The Flame Trees of Thika, is Little House without the softened edges. They are both fictionalized but at the heart is the truth of their upbringing. Unlike Little House, you are not spared details about ticks and ants and dead animals and goat sacrifices. You will get terrified of what could happen to your pets in Africa. You will not be thinking, oh, how lovely to life in a sod house, no, you will be thinking, dear lord, I am so glad someone didn't have to heat up a needle and use it to extract an egg sack from under my toe nails. Because that is what Kenya was for Elspeth.

Now, I'm not saying that Kenya isn't Elspeth's her version of heaven and paradise combined, it's just that she doesn't stint on the whole picture, the good and the bad. This is what makes it such a great read. You are not just contained only in her little world of house and hearth, but all the characters in her life. Because of the farm needing so many workers, you get a glimpse of tribal life and the strong differences between the Kikuyu and the Masai. How the natives should never be underestimated in their cunning, a story about the Masai stealing cattle but shipping it via railway under the "true" owners name is one example. I say "true" owner, because Elspeth digs deep into the mindset of the Africans, and how their definition of property is far more fluid than Europeans.

Elspeth, growing up around these people, has a way of not condemning them for being different, but being able to see both sides. She understands why her parents and other settlers would be annoyed, but she sees that, through the natives eyes, that they aren't to blame, it's how they live. This is so refreshing. She is more an anthropologist, seeing everyone for what they are, versus the typical British Imperialist's view of do as I say, live as I do, that is the only way. In fact, by the time I got to the end of the book all the characters had become my friends so deeply that I didn't want to leave them, even if World War I was starting. Thankfully I see there is a sequel!

Now I must sidetrack everything to do a little review of this edition. This edition was released with a new introduction in the late 80s after the success of the BBC miniseries. Sadly it is long out of print, which baffles me. The book is far more beautiful then the little paperback one you can currently get. There are luscious illustrations by the Kenyan artist Frances Pelizzoli. Not only do they bring Kenya alive, but they so sync with the story. Their placement in the text is perfect and they are so accurate to the story. Nothing annoys me more then when a book is illustrated and the illustrations don't go with the text. The point of illustrations is to illuminate and expand your connection with the text. The most recent grievous perpetrator of this was in Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, where Dave McKean, a frequent collaborator with Neil, has Bod dressed in clothes before Silas gives him clothes. Um, yeah, not meshing together and pulling me out of the book. Whereas Pelizzoli just dragged me further in the world of Elspeth.

Though I have a feeling this edition was more for admiring then reading. The paper stock is glossy, so it's hard to read in some lighting situations because the pages reflect the light. Also, the font is so small and the lines so long per page, it's easy to lose you place and makes it far longer to read. I'm a fast reader and I struggled with the book just for this reason. So, your paperback copy you have sitting on your shelf will serve you better for the daily readings, but if you ever see a copy of this at your local used bookstore, pick it up for your coffee table, it's beautiful and, well, it's about coffee too, so thematic with your table. A win win situation.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Ashford April, Dave McKean, Elspeth Huxley, Frances Pelizzoli, Happy Valley, Kenya, Kikuyu, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Lauren Willig, Little House, Masai, Neil Gaiman, The Flame Trees of Thika, The Graveyard Book, Ticks

So, I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been excitedly awaiting the arrival of Lauren Willig's first true stand alone novel (Two L being a trunk novel and law school satire it doesn't have the magic that the name Ashford brings, though it is still a great read, so make sure you read it). Seeing as an inordinate amount of my readers come from Lauren's website thanks to google analytics (hi fellow Lauren junkies!) I know you feel as I do. Ashford, finally! Not just the fact that it's a favorite writer of mine, but that it combines two things I love, the 1920s and Kenya, makes this book worthy of it's own themed month.

I have always been intrigued by East Africa, not just Egypt, which I'm sure my loyal blog readers will know is a true obsession of mine, but Kenya and The Happy Valley. I should add, that I think this is a hereditary affliction, seeing as my mother is also addicted to the likes of Isak Dinesen, Elspeth Huxley and Beryl Markham, therefore she was a great resource to raid for my month's reading selection, even if I did have to deal with her rants about how Robert Redford was woefully miscast in Out of Africa... therefore, using Lauren's "Ashford Origins" and "If You Like" posts on her blog I complied a reading list for April, which oddly also influenced last months Mitford March, in which I could revel in the world of The Ashford Affair and Kenya. It didn't hurt either when having the next snow storm being predicted to be able to dive into a nice warm continent.

So what do you have to look forward to this month, besides the release of The Ashford Affair? Well, there's a giveaway... how could I not have one I ask you? I am also bringing back my dream casting scenarios which I do love doing, for the book's leads, Bea and Addie. It was a little creepy how easily I was able to picture these two actresses as the leads... and no, I'm not going to tell you now, so you'll have to come back later. But what I think is most fun is that for each book I picked from Lauren's recommendations, Lauren has written a little blurb about her feelings on the book and how it either struck a cord with her or influenced her in some way. So, you're not just getting my blattering on about the books, but Lauren's as well. I do so hope you enjoy this new book as much as I did and this month as much as I did putting it all together! Also, don't forget to leave a comment for your chance to win prizes (see below)!

The Prizes*:
1st Prize: A lovely 1st Edition of The Ashford Affair, as well as a SIGNED ARC of The Ashford Affair AND (yes there's more) a SIGNED Paperback copy of my favorite Lauren Willig Book, The Mischief of the Mistletoe... you can read the two versions of The Ashford Affair side by side and try to find the subtle differences!

2nd Prize: A 1st Edition of The Ashford Affair, as well as a SIGNED Paperback copy of The Seduction of the Crimson Rose, the 4th in Lauren's Pink Carnation Series.

3rd Prize: A 1st Edition of The Ashford Affair, as well as a SIGNED Paperback copy of The Temptation of the Night Jasmine, the 5th in Lauren's Pink Carnation Series.

*PS, the prizes deserve a BIG shout out to Lauren, for the signed paperbacks, she is such a wonderful supporter of blogs and libraries and is basically just totally awesome. Secondly a HUGE shout out to Sarah Goldstein at St. Martin's who not only provided me with ARCs, but is also providing the 1st editions. So fabulous to see that Lauren's new publisher is just as awesome as her Pink publisher, Dutton.

The Rules:
1. Open to EVERYONE (for clarification, this means international, yes, including Kenya, but sadly, not Kenya in the 1920s, I don't have a time machine, drat), just because you haven't been following me all along doesn't mean you don't matter, you just get more entries if you prove you love me by following.

2. Please make sure I have a way to contact you if your name is drawn, either your blogger profile or a link to your website/blog or you could even include your email address with your comment(s) or email me.

3. Contest ends Tuesday, April 30th at 11:59PM CST

4. How to enter: Just comment in the space below!

5. And for those addicted to getting extra entries:

• +1 for answering the question: If you where to build a home in Kenya's Happy Valley, what would you name your house?
• +2 for becoming a follower
• +10 if you are already a follower
• +10 for each time you advertise this contest - blog post, sidebar, twitter (please @eliza_lefebvre), etc. (but you only get credit for the first post, so tweet all you like, and I thank you for it, but you'll only get the +10 once). Also please leave a link! There's a handy code on the side for your sidebars!
• +25 if you comment on any of the posts during Ashford April, with something other than "I hope I win" or a variation thereof.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:01 AM 5 comments  

Labels: 1920s, ARCs, Beryl Markham, Elspeth Huxley, Giveaway, Isak Dinesen, Kenya, Lauren Willig, Out of Africa, Pink Carnation, The Ashford Affair, The Seduction of the Crimson Rose, The Temptation of the Night Jasmine