Enchanted Evening: Volume III of the Autobiography of M. M. Kaye

by M.M. Kaye

Book Overview

In the first volume of her autobiography, The Sun in the Morning, M.M. Kaye detailed the first eighteen years of her life in India and England and introduced readers to her love affair with India. She brought to life its people, scents, vibrant colors, and breathtaking landscapes. In the second volume, Golden Afternoon, she happily returned to her beloved India after years in a British boarding school. New to the glories of the Delhi social season, M.M. Kaye recounted her delightful exploits as a vivacious young woman in Raj society. Now, in Enchanted Evening, M.M. Kaye is a young woman forced to leave her cherished home in India when her father takes a new post in china. Though at first disoriented by the unfamiliar customs and confusing protocol of her new surroundings, it is in China that she discovers the pleasures that come from independence. Coming into her own as a painter, Kaye first meets with artistic success in China and then moves to cramped quarters in London's South Kensington neighborhood, where she begins to flourish as a writer. With vivid descriptions and the wisdom that comes with age, M.M. Kaye looks back on the years she spent as a young woman in a world as yet unmarked by World War II's devastation.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312265816
• ISBN13: 9780312265816
• Release Date: December 2000
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Such an eventful life!

Imagine living a life that needs three volumes to recount-- and that's only for the first third of your life. Kaye's writing evokes hauntingly beautiful images. I hate to use a cliche, but reading her autobiography has transported me to another time and place. I *highly* recommend this series!

Enchanted Evening

LOVED it!!!! I enjoyed everything Ms. Kaye wrote about India and that includes her three volume autobiography. It is a shame that she started this books so late and never gave us the rest of her amazing life: back to the UK, traveling with her husband through the 1950s and 60s when she wrote her "Death in...." series. So many things her fans would have liked to know.

The third and hopefully not last volume of the series!

...or perhaps this should be subtitled - in which Mollie searches for Mr Right. This is the third volume of MM Kayes hugely enjoyable and readable autobiographies - and they are of her childhood - and in the case of this, the third volume, her young adulthood in India. Yet this book ends in 1939 with the world on the brink of war and India still almost a decade away from independence.Mollie's world is still that of the Raj, the privilege and the society of exiled Englishmen and women who have literally transposed their lives to another country but hugely interesting to read - and funny. MM Kaye is an excellent observationalist and writer - India in all its colours and textures comes alive under her pen. Also her search - or rather perhaps her family's search for a Mr Right to take her off the shelf and (according to her sister-in-law) off their hands. I very much hope this is not the final volume of her book because MM Kaye (last I heard) was still alive and so ending her autobiographies in 1939 when there is such a huge amount of her life left to cover would be a travesty. She didn't even publish her first epic novel until the late 1950's although her mysteries were being written at this early stage. MM Kaye is such a good writer this may be the perfect way to meet her - through her autobiographies.

Enchanting is the Right Word!

Am enjoying this third part of M.M.Kaye's autobiography as much as the previous two--maybe more! Her description of the death of her father so mirrors my own, I was reminded of my sister's statement that "nothing ever turns out the way one thinks it will." Ms. Kaye has such a way with description and words, and it is fascinating to read of these last days in countries like China, Japan and India that were irrevocably changed by WWII. I hope there will be a Part IV!! I am filled with a longing for these seemingly gentler times, even though I was born long after they were already a memory to Ms. Kaye.

Light, fun to read, and fascinating.

I just finished Enchanted Evening, and I liked it as much as I've liked all of M. M. Kaye's work. Although not well off financially, she and her family lived in India and China during what seemed like a fun period for women of the English upper classes -- not much to do besides attend parties, travel to exotic locales, and search for a suitable husband. Her stories of the good times she had, plus how she began to support herself with her art and with writing, were a very welcome distraction to me. I am looking forward to reading the next one.