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Too Close to the Sun: The Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton
 
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Too Close to the Sun: The Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton [Illustrated] (Hardcover)

by Sara Wheeler (Author)
3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
RRP: £18.99
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 284 pages
  • Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd; illustrated edition edition (2 Mar 2006)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0224063804
  • ISBN-13: 978-0224063807
  • Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 14.6 x 3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 69,766 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Henry Hitchins, TLS

Wheeler has a sharp eye for lustrous detail, and her comic touch is sure.


Peter Longworth, Guardian

"Wheeler can write up a landscape or the mellow moonlight of the savannah as well as Blixen"
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Customer Reviews

10 Reviews
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 (2)
2 star:
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Average Customer Review
3.9 out of 5 stars (10 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
23 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Into Africa, 13 Mar 2006
By James (London) - See all my reviews
Anyone who saw the movie Out of Africa has to read this book - to read the true story behind the Robert Redford character. In real life - Sara Wheeler reveals - Denys Finch Hatton was 'bald as a billiard ball'! He was the second son of an earl who took off for East Africa - 'still then the land of the pioneer' - the archetypal eternal wanderer. He is just as romantic as Redford, according to this spellbinding portrait by Sara Wheeler, but more complex - he was a committed reader, a fine musician and a lover of Chateau d'Yquem wine. His love affair with the writer Karen Blixen comes alive in the bush as Wheeler recreates their safaris. She also describes an epic 6-month trip to Somalia, in which Finch Hatton bought a herd of bony cattle and drove them down to Nairobi. Tragedy, comedy, love and war - what more can you ask of a biography? Brilliant.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars not quite famous, 2 Mar 2008
By H. Rogers - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Too Close to the Sun: The Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton (Paperback)

This is a cleverly written book about someone who did little and achieved less but was by all accounts a great charmer. His main claim to fame, posthumously, was through Karen Blixen's memoir Out of Africa. With so little information on Denys Finch Hatton's (DFH) life and indeed little to write about - the main themes are endless trips back and forth from England to Kenya and failed business ventures - the author wisely gives the book the sub title, The life and Times of DFH. This enables her to pad the book out with describtions of events in England and Kenya during DFH's lifetime. This is the saving of the book as the author is both witty and has an eye for the absurd. However, at times she falls into the trap of adopting the same writing style as her subjects with many archaic phrases and describtions. The biggest drawback of the book, however, is the subject himself. DFH's life appears little different from the hundreds of wealthy englishmen who went out to Kenya in the early part of the last century, even his romance with Blixen has the air of a relationship of convenience - certainly not the great romance that Blixen made it out to be. The book therefore comes accross more as a gentle stroll through Kenya/English society in the 20s and 30s rather than a biography of someone who probably doesn't merit one.
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31 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, slapdash, 6 Mar 2006
This really is quite a dreadful book. I bought it after reading a couple of good reviews, hoping for an intelligent presentation of the life of Denys Finch Hatton, who I thought sounded interesting and who was also linked to the life of KAren Blixen. There's some interesting stuff in here, but I was left feeling very disappointed. The main thing I didn't like was that the book reads like the sort of biography that might have been written 80 years ago - it's really quite incurious about the realities of DFH's life, as if Wheeler is more interested in showing how nicely she can write about African scenery and sounding witty than actually getting down and dirty with the facts of DFH's life (and not just facts, even some thoughtful speculation would be interesting, but very little is supplied). What we get are some swash-buckling anecdotes, the sort of thing Oxford types might exchange over the port at High Table, and that's that. It's all very bright and breezy, somehow soulless, and then there's Wheeler's dismissive rubbishing of Karen Blixen, which just irritates the reader. The most interesting thing about DFH, in the end, is that Karen Blixen wrote about him, so if you say that her works were just tiresome then you start to erode at the reader's interest in your main subject - why should we read about this man that this 'tiresome' writer was so obsessed with? Perhaps Wheeler just realised that DFH didn't merit a biography - by the end I really didn't feel that he did!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Robert Redford
Following the very successful film Out of Africa there have been several biographies of the principal real-life characters, Karen Blixen and Denys Finch Hatton and their times -... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Brian Singleton

5.0 out of 5 stars finch hatton, an icon
superbly detailed book that describes a real life character warts and all from a time when Britain produced men and women that broke the mould and shaped the world as we know it... Read more
Published 3 months ago by M. Bradshaw

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing
I agree with the negative reviewer: "Disappointing Slapdash". Apart from a few good photographs I have not seen of Finch Hatton before, there was little in this book that made me... Read more
Published 9 months ago by warthog

3.0 out of 5 stars Too hurried a biography
What could have been Sara Wheeler's very finest book to date is sadly marred by signs of over-hasty research and writing, with some irritatingly obvious errors intruding on an... Read more
Published on 4 May 2006 by C. L. Mckelvie

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful Read
I was transported back in time with this compelling story. Fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable. Wonderfully written.
Published on 12 Mar 2006

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful, thought-provoking read
This is a great read. It really brought alive the age in which Hatton lived, and the incidents, relationships and societies which outlined the life of this quite extraordinary... Read more
Published on 11 Mar 2006 by C. S. Hutton

5.0 out of 5 stars A Stunning Read
This is a brilliant book which stunningly recreates a forgotten era. Sara Wheeler teases out themes in the life Denys Finch Hatton, the legendary and pioneering white hunter who... Read more
Published on 11 Mar 2006 by Peter

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