Too Close to the Sun: The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton

by Sara Wheeler

Book Overview

A champion of Africa, legendary for his good looks, his charm, and his prowess as a soldier, lover, and hunter, Denys Finch Hatton inspired Karen Blixen to write the unforgettable Out of Africa. Now esteemed British biographer Sara Wheeler tells the truth about this extraordinarily charismatic adventurer. Born to an old aristocratic family that had gambled away most of its fortune, Finch Hatton grew up in a world of effortless elegance and boundless...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812968921
• ISBN13: 9780812968927
• Release Date: July 2009
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.2" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Icarus

Sara Wheeler's "Too Close to the Sun" is as much a biography of a place and of an era as it is of a man. The author went looking for Denys Finch Hatton and found East Africa as well as her elusive subject. The man, himself, was once a nearly mythical East African figure. Finch Hatton is best known today as Karen Blixen's long-time inamorata in the film version of her book "Out of Africa." In life, he was a privileged Englishman who often worked as an African guide and professional hunter and who flourished and died during Kenya's colonial period. He was also a reluctant soldier, a glad aviator and a man who loved theatre, photography, dance, books and women. Ms. Wheeler says that her aims in writing the biography were: "to depict a figure in the landscape, to explore the universal themes threaded through his story, and to find out why he was an engine of myth." Other than a few personal letters and some newspaper articles, he wrote little. Because of this, and because she writes so many years after his death, Ms. Wheeler is left with little more than trace evidence and the words of others with which to develop her theme and achieve those goals. Fortunately, she's an able writer and tenacious researcher. She also uses the words of Teddy Roosevelt, H. Rider Haggard, Ernest Hemingway, Siegfried Sassoon, Elspeth Huxley, W.B. Yeats and Evelyn Waugh, among others, as sources to help her develop her African story. Karen Blixen is, perhaps, her most famous source for direct Denys Finch Hatton information. Karen Blixen (aka Isak Dinesen) wrote about Finch Hatton as her lover and used her version of him as an element to drive her own story. Sara Wheeler, on the other hand, is a graduate of the same Oxford college as Finch Hatton and seems more in sympathy with him as a human being. Beryl Markham, an aviatrix, writer and renowned wild child, is another useful source. Martha Gellhorn (Hemingway's third wife) described her as, "Not your ordinary Circe." Beryl says of Denys, "As for charm, I suspect that Denys invented it." Those may be the final words on Denys Finch Hatton. In two-hundred-fifty-two pages of text, author Wheeler can't find anyone to say a bad word about him. Sara Wheeler certainly charmed this reviewer when she quoted Anthony Blanche, a character in Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited." Antoine, as he's known, warns another character about the danger of English charm, stating that it blights anything it touches. Ms. Wheeler believes that Finch Hatton's own charm nearly destroyed his ambition. Ms. Wheeler's writing skills are (to say the least) fully developed. She calls the disastrous British 1916 offensive in France the "Apocalypse on the Somme." In one chapter, she describes the deteriorating relationship between Finch Hatton and Karen Blixen by saying, "They were living in different mental worlds...coexisting like the twin beaters of a rotary whisk." In passing, Ms. Wheeler notes what she calls "the spirit

The elusive Finch Hatton

I visited East Africa and while in and around Nairobi took a chance on visiting the public museum that is now entrusted in preserving Karen Blixen's original home and a few acres that remain the last remnant of the Karen Coffee Plantation. On the tour I came to learn of Denis Fitch Hatton, the early days of colonization of British East Africa ( World War I in East Africa) and the likes of Lord Delamere, Count Blixen, Beryl Markham, Kermit Roosevelt and Prince Edward. Although much has been written by and /or about Isak Dinesen, Beryl Markham, Blix (and the others) so very little was available to learn more of the elusive Finch Hatton as early flyer, big game hunter, East African land speculator, conservationist, herdsman, nature photographer...and here again the author admits that accurate personal historical information remains sparse. Nevertheless the author is to be commended and this book can be highly recommended as a worthy presentation of an unusual life "well lived" in the context of his time and place. Admittedly it is not all "easy reading" and the author does perhaps over indulge in the "who's who" and "who's title is the umpteenth earl of somewhere....but I can accept all of that as necessary and essential to that time and place in history. The book especially captures the land,it's colonists, it's native people, the animals and Denis Finch Hatton's place within East African history. Thoroughly enjoyable and informative reading.

a life changer

Why some books win prizes and others do not eludes me; this one is a prize winner. Too Close to the Sun has set me on a worthy adventure to understand the Victorian/Edwardian cusp especially in British Africa and for this I am thankful because those were glory days. Through Ms. Wheeler I have met persons Much More Interesting than me and my friends. Her dogged research has invigorated my life. For her reader's delight, the author darns together memories, letters, and written data concerning a self-effacing gentleman, Denys Finch Hatton. Luckily for us we may now tag along in the glow of his charisma and be voyeurs of his well-born and lively acquaintances. We may celebrate with African settlers as they host a wilderness New Year's dinner 'comme il faut', we may sit in our a.c. as British soldiers portage battleships across a brutal continent during WWI, we may brush dust off our jackets after cavalierly shooting two charging lions with a double-barreled shotgun, we may politely manoevre and entertain a persnickity Prince of Wales. I thank Ms. Wheeler for her Fascination of What's Difficult, to paraphrase Mr. Yeats, because pulling together a three-dimensional picture of This Time using only carefully chosen evidence is difficult and more honest than throwing together hearsay and calling it a book. Her talent as a lover of language is evident as she brings us the scents, sounds, atmosphere, gossip, innuendo, mores, jokes, custom, and emotion that enliven her facts and put feet in Finch Hatton's footsteps. Ms. Wheeler's pages rebuild that World before the Wars that we 21st centuriers can't understand and most often wrongly judge. I sprinted to the bookstore for more news of the largely-lived lives mentioned throughout Too Close To The Sun. I'm now hooked on the soap opera of the Blixens (the 2nd Mrs.,too), Lord Delamere, the Masai, Lord Carberry, various British Generals, the younger Mr. Roosevelt.... I can't think of any group more instructive to learn about! Beryl Markham's West With the Night was my next read. What a woman, and how fascinating to get to know her from her own writing, so different than her appearance in TCTTS. I have ordered Bror Blixen's African Hunter, to catch his and Dr. Turvey's viewpoint on the Kenyan crowd. I plan to read Elspeth Huxley's book about growing up on a coffee plantation. Like craning to hear the whispered name of someone you love, I want to hear again the names that Ms. Wheeler has called forth.

Snapshot of the unique society of British East Africa

Ever since I saw the movie "Out of Africa" I have been captivated with the lives of Karen Blixen, Beryl Markham and Denys Finch Hatton. "Too Close to the Sun" focuses on the unique life of Denys and tries to explain how and why he lived his life according to his own rules. The book also describes the history of British East Africa or Kenya as we now know it. This biography was a facinating read and hard to put down!!!