Out in the Midday Sun

by Elspeth Huxley

With the same charm that made THE FLAME TREES OF THIKA so memorable, Elspeth Huxley evokes the Africa of her adult life, in particular the legendary personalities of Kenya between the wars, the men and women who gave the country its character and helped shape its destiny.

"A memorable portrait of Kenya in change. Only a writer with her skill, her deep-rooted love of the country, and her intimate knowledge of its people could bring out so clearly both the romance and the realities of African life." (B-O-T Editorial Review Board)

Genres: Africa, Nonfiction, Memoir, Kenya, History, Travel, Biography

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Elspeth Joscelin Huxley was an English writer, journalist, broadcaster, magistrate, environmentalist, farmer, and government adviser. She wrote over 40 books, including her best-known lyrical books, The Flame Trees of Thika and The Mottled Lizard, based on her youth in a coffee farm in British Kenya. Her husband, Gervas Huxley, was a grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley and a cousin of Aldous Huxley.

Reviews

[K.M. Weiland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as engaging as her original memoir, The Flame Trees of Thika, if only because it lacks a solid narrative in its episodic focus on various Kenyan personalities.

[Patty Simpson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Giving it 2 stars based on the definition provided that 2 stars = "it was ok". I absolutely loved her autobiography, "The Flame Trees of Thika", so found this book very disappointing. Nostalgic look at some of the characters from Kenya in the 1930s. Some of the tales were entertaining - especially when they included people I'd already heard of, like Karen Blixen or Beryl Markham - and it showed how different things were at that time; but there was no real flow, no apparent reason why she chose the people she did, and somehow just not enough there to make a whole book.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elspeth Huxley was a journalist who grew up in Kenya and became a major chronicler of the "Settler" or European point of view on Kenyan history. Her earlier memoir, "Flames Trees of Thika" records her childhood on a settler farm and is charming mainly for its vivid descriptions and for her ability to express a child's confused perspective on the adult prejudices and actions she witnessed. "Out in the Midday Sun" covers Huxley's more adult impressions of Kenya. While she focuses on her trip to Kenya in the 30's to write a biography of Lord Delamere, she ranges widely over the people and situations of the European community in Kenya. As always her descriptions of Kenya vibrate with clear writing and her love of the country. I really enjoyed another perspective on local history. Nonetheless, I think this book would have limited appeal for those who are less than fanatical about Kenyan history.

[Fern · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finished reading this whilst back in the UK having spent more than than a year living in Kenya, took me straight back there!

[Fran Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lively book about colonial Kenya and the people and places the author has known.

[Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very much the weakest link in the "African Childhood" trilogy, this book is rambling and diffuse in the extreme. The first two books are meant to be novels, and the final book a straight-up memoir of her life. None of them are that. In reality, we are told next to nothing about the author's life. Suddenly in this volume, she is married. Where did he come from? How did they meet? When and where did they marry? We are never told. It's all surface, gossip about other people's lives,"so I was told" and "it was said"-- thirdhand scuttlebutt mostly about people who were already dead when she wrote it, so no comeback. She skips merrily backward and forward in time from 1938 to 1983 by just turning a page. You could get whiplash from reading this book. She jumps from describing a female circumcision ceremony to discussing Karatina's "splendid" market and how everyone finds a native market so pleasant! with only a paragraph break to separate them. She also stupidly assigns the European ranks of duke and baron to "Amharic" (ie Ethiopian) officials.

As in the previous volumes, the countryside is described to the point of exhaustion, but there's no real story here. Fully one third of the book is comprised of endnotes, but that doesn't add any realism. The text itself could have done with a decent proofreader and editor. There are far too many commas, often misplaced. We are also treated to such jewels as tourists who "eat in an open-sided banda which has a hole in the side made by the trunk of an inquisitive elephant." Well, that's interesting. If the sides are open, is there a hole in midair?

The author seems to want to write about the process of Kenya gaining its independence; she talks out of both sides of her mouth about freedom and colonialism, but then "one man one vote" seems ridiculous for black Africans in her view. However, she can be just as snide about non-English whites as she is about blacks. One moment she is slating Jomo Kenyatta; the next he's her new best friend because he remembers her from a London course she took back when his first name was Johnston.

Putting a book on my "Currently Reading" status would appear to be the kiss of death. I felt obliged to finish it, but I also kept putting it down and reading other things (partly out of necessity, but I wasn't missing it.) I kept reading and reading, hoping for the story to go somewhere. Suddenly I turned a page and there were all those endnotes. Meh.
A star and a half.

[Lily Brennan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting book however a bit of a disappointment after reading her first two memoirs - it felt like more of a collection of people she knew or knew of instead of having any real structure. It was quite hard to keep up with who was who because of this- some people only got a few paragraphs and many of the people discussed had multiple marriages which added another layer of confusion. It felt almost like two different books running conveniently - one of her return to Africa as an adult and one a history of the early british colonisers and so fell rather short of being a good book about either.

[Mark Kile · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this piece for its well-rounded depiction of the lives of a broad-range of settlers and colonialists in Kenya. It is an excellent piece of journalism and is not meant to be compared to Huxley's personal autobiography, The Flames Trees of Thika. Sometimes it feels a bit gossipy, but never salacious. It is more of a non-discriminating "Who's Who" of colonial Kenya.

As with all her writing, she has a knack for description that takes you to the country and towns of Kenya. Huxley employs entertaining turns of phrase that make me feel, "I wish I could write like that".

[Robert Scholl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting

My one critique of this was that I expected it to be a true sequel to the Flame Tree and Mottled Lizard (which I read just before). This is true autobiography and as result there's a disconnect since there are slight differences on the same stories here. That said this provides interesting context to post WW2 Kenya

[Micebyliz]

Another of her wonderful books about life in Kenya. Certainly a whole lifetime ago. Some of the account is difficult to read and will make you angry, but it is reported as fact, not opinion. Her experiences and the people she knew are a list worth a novel in themselves.
Not a fast read, it's a book that needs absorbing for all the cultural history you learn.

[Regina Hart · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved, loved, loved the first two books in this trilogy. The third, however, read more like the society news column in a small town newspaper. It lacked vibrancy and life, and instead was an enumeration of disconnected events.

[Maggie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found it a little difficult to get through this book. The writing wasn’t gripping and there didn’t seem to be much of a point. I finished because I think the point was to learn about Kenya which I’m interested in!

[Lucy Lang · Rating 4 out of 5]

A literary masterpiece, but despite that there were some passages, which I found a little dense. Overall, a treat though.

[Scott]

British East Africa, a bygone time

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hard for me to get through

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting anecdotes. A glimpse of past Kenya.

[Charles Inglin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sequel to "The Flame Trees of Thika." In the early 1930's Elspeth Huxley, her husband having taken a job that required extensive travel but no budget for her to accompany him, returns to her parents' farm in Kenya, where she has a commission to write a biography of Lord Delamere. This volume contains stories of both the settlers and natives of Kenya during the colonial period, with a follow up when she returned in 1983 for the twentieth anniversary of independence. An interesting read for student of British colonialism in East Africa, full of colorful characters.

[Bebe (Sarah) Brechner · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good follow up to one of my favorite African memoirs, Huxley's The Flame Trees of Thika. Huxley looks back on her 70 years in Africa (this was written in 1985), and it is a dense, name-dropping account of what life was really like for colonists in Africa from the late 19th century through mid-twentieth. It can be a bit hard to follow all the families and names, but still a fascinating and refreshingly unromantic perspective.

[Shubha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Huxley is one of the best white African memoirists. There is a seemingly endless supply of autobiographies by settlers or african-born whites, mostly from Kenya or South Africa. Huxley's books really bring alive the spirit and atmosphere of European settlers in Kenya in the first half of the twentieth century. Plus, this book includes lots of interesting historical details about Eldoret.

[Linda Watkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the true story of Elspeth Huxley's return to Kenya after being away for 8 years. She married Gervas Huxley, Aldous Huxley's cousin.

Another great real but heart breaking story of Kenya from one who lives it.

[Jill]

Out in the Midday Sun. My Kenya (1987)

[Avary Doubleday · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would not rate it this highly now. It is definitely not equal to Thorn Trees of Thika nor The Mottled Lizard (On the Edge of the Rift), but still an interesting book to one who loves Kenya.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Awesome book.