Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
After 77 pages of family background--her mother was the daughter of a China-based missionary and her father was a British army officer--bestselling novelist Kaye ( The Far Pavilions ), at age 82, recalls her 10 years of idyllic childhood in India as a time in paradise, and her nine years of adolescence in England as a time in purgatory. Although written with gushing, romantic enthusiasm, her kaleidoscopic story of a long-lost innocence just before and after World War I helps to explain Kaye's idealization of the British Raj and her love for Kipling's verse. These loving memories of a beautiful land and its delightful people may surprise readers of Paul Scott's much better written Raj Quartet , but it is probably equally authentic. Photos not seen by PW. Literary Guild selection. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Kaye's fans will not be surprised by the exotic locales or the evocative observations found in the first volume of the best-selling author's autobiography. xlBorn to British parents from families with a tradition of service in India and China, Kaye's ``conversation'' is rich with recollections of a carefree childhood in British-governed India (The Raj) and of a more restricted adolescence in school at ``home''--in drab England so far from her real home and from her beloved father and social butterfly of a mother. This rag-bag of exotic and mundane scraps (a metaphor that Kaye establishes in the foreword) spills forth palpable scenes of family and folklore, of friendships and of memorable events. Readers of Kaye's fiction or of the period will enjoy this title and look forward to the next installments.-- V. Louise Saylor, Eastern Washington Univ. Lib., Cheney (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The author of The Far Pavilions (1978), etc., recalls her childhood enchanted by India under the Raj. Immediately, Kaye leads us back to the halcyon days of an English girl and of a country ""as peaceful and unspoiled as Eden before the fall."" Born in 1908, Kaye lived first in Simla, the Indian government's summer capital at the foothills of the Himalayas, and then on the plains in Delhi, ""the old walled city of the Moguls,"" which (like this book) ""is soaked in history."" In direct and often passionate prose, she envelopes us in pageantry, fragrant blooms, ""sun-baked earth, dust and spices,"" stories of ghosts and tigers. She remembers playing at the deserted Taj Mahal, and watching a glittering procession of paper tombs followed by Moslems who whipped themselves and streamed blood. At night she listened to the peacocks and jackals, and to the silence of ""untouched, unknown country"" leading to Tibet. By contrast, common childhood and today's one-note world pale. So does England, where she is sent to boarding school after the Great War, three quarters of the way through the book. In this brimming memoir, Kaye also writes a personal defense of the Raj (before ""the rot set in"") and a moving tribute to her father, Sir Cecil Kaye. Fluent (like herself) in Hindustani, he devoted his life to serving India, at anguishing cost to his family, separated by continents and often for years. Kaye's unapologetic colonial point of view--she dismisses Passage to India as Forster's ""virulent attack on his own race""--is, however myopic, never dull, conveying vividly a particular experience of the long-gone Empire, on the subcontinent she innocently considered home. Romantic, opinionated, exciting, informed by Kipling and a photographic memory: Kaye's autobiography should enthrall not only fans of her sprawling historical fiction, but many others as well. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
