Karen Blixen - Isak Dinesen home

Excerpts

• Publishers Weekly, April 10, 1995 : One of the more intriguing adventures undertaken by a 20th-century woman. Donelson's well-researched biography of Blixen's years in Kenya is an absorbing read that will grab readers whether or not they are familiar with "Out of Africa". Donelson's depiction of Blixen is decidedly less romantic than Blixen's own but no less intriguing for that...Donelson, who spent years living in the Ngong Hills of Kenya, re-creates colonial Africa's physical, political and social milieu in remarkable detail. Intelligently and skillfully organized, the book offers a sympathetic yet candid portrait of Blixen and her complex relationships with her husband and with her lover, Denys Finch Hatton
• Library Journal: Donelson, a physician who has lived in the Ngong Hills in Africa where Dinesen farmed from 1914 to 1931, closely chronicles the now-legendary African years of Karen Dinesen, Baroness Blixen, with a new slant. Using Dinesen's written descriptions of her symptoms and the work of other physicians who have written on her lifelong illness, Donelson concludes that the illness that crippled and ultimately killed her was not syphilis but arsenic poisoning, caused by tonics she frequently took. Medically, the theory is ingenious...
• Kirkus, August 1998: Donelson has committed herself to separating the facts of Blixen's life from her self-created myth. The result is a book that traces the transformation of an unassuming young grand dame of the veldt (Blixen went to Africa in 1914, when she was 28). In the course of her narrative, Donelson, an M.D., succeeds in debunking with alacrity and insight some of the commonly held assumptions about Blixen's medical history. She doubts, for example, that Blixen's later physical ailments were the result of syphilis (contracted from her husband during their first year of marriage). More likely, they were caused by the arsenic she took for years as a tonic. The discussions of Blixen's physical state and frequent bouts of depression are concrete and convincing....The biography brings to light a wealth of detail about her African experiences
• John Coyne, RPCV Writers & Readers, November 1995 Donelson has written a fascinating biography, a true picture of Karen Blixen, her lover, Denys Finch Hatton, and her husband, baron Bror Blixen
• Mary Ann Riley, Des Moines Register, July 2, 1995 Donelson puts the romance in perspective and moreover offers a fresh appraisal of the author's literary output in the light of lifelong physical problems. This is an authoritative, yet warm and readable biography of a colorful literary figure
• ALA Booklist, April 1995 Two facts contribute to the spellbinding nature of this updated account of Dinesen's years in Africa. Attributing symptoms Dinesen suffered to arsenic poisoning, Donelson lends her medical expertise to reinterpretations of Dinesen's health problems. At the same time, Donelson's personal experience of life in Kenya--in the very same area where Dinesen herself lived--accounts for especially vivid depictions of the African landscape and of Dinesen's beloved home. Admirers of "Out of Africa" and "Seven Gothic Tales" should delight in Donelson's graceful, beguiling prose, revealing the every essence of Dinesen's stirring experience of African life and of her vital relationships with lovers and family
• Midwest Book Review, August 1998 "Out of Isak Dinesen" is an important new biography and the first to present Karen Blixen to a broad general audience...an impressive and intimate biography that has both broken new ground and corrected previous errors concerning the life and work of a major literary figure
• January Magazine online, March 1998 The character [Meryl] Streep portrayed wasn't a fictional someone. Rather, she was a living person who breathed adventure at a time when women most often didn't...Donelson's reportage of these events as well as her research are impeccable, as well as being interesting reading. "Out of Isak Dinesen" is one woman's story, but it is also a beautiful portrait of Africa at the beginning of this century and the political and environmental influences that affected it...Snapshots of Blixen's Africa are written with the same lyricism Donelson brings to breathing life into her portrayal of the woman herself...Donelson has done a remarkable job in bringing this portion of history back to life
• The Women's Review of Books, September, 1998 Linda Donelson's intent in this engrossing retelling is to return the depth and color of reality to a rich and finally tragic story...imbued with a strong affinity for Africa and for her subject...she carefully documents a narrative that is eminently readable and empathetic, perhaps because of the power of her conviction that she is telling the true story of a flesh and blood woman with whom other flesh and blood women may identify... "Out of Isak Dinesen" is a meticulous account of the ups and downs of the marriage...The famous romance of Karen and Denys Finch-Hatton, the British aristocrat and sportsman, is here given substance missing in Isak Dinesen's own memoirs as well as in other biographies...Our understanding of one of the foremost writers of the century is immeasurably deepened.
• "Linda Donelson's biography of Karen Blixen's African years makes such absorbing reading that I could hardly put the book down. She is a splendid narrator who knows how to organize scenes and delineate characters, especially the complex characters of Karen, her husband Bror, and her lover Denys Finch Hatton...I strongly recommend this book to readers interested in the life and work of Karen Blixen or Isak Dinesen."--Robert Langbaum, author of "Isak Dinesen's Art: The Gaiety of Vision"
• "the book is well written and thoroughly researched...it proves my old idea that Blixen's life was more interesting and more exciting in itself than the soap opera it has been turned into--with help from the great Storyteller herself. Donelson presents the facts...painting them neither black nor white nor squeezing the tear ducts, and the whole saga becomes the more moving and interesting for that."--Anders Westenholz, author, and relative of Karen Blixen.
• "Dr. Donelson's forte is...her perceptiveness and pursuit of factual events and circumstances of relevance to Blixen's years in Africa. Not only is she well acquainted with both Blixen's personal and Africa's colonial history, but she has managed to bring her own experiences from [Africa] to bear on her rendition. She has a gift for sympathetic insight that befits her subject...refreshing...."--Professor Paul Houe, Director, The Center for Nordic Studies, University of Minnesota. "At last Karen Blixen is a real person!"--Armelle Webster, Blixen scholar.

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