She received an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan in 1996, and is also the author of two collections of poetry, the memoir Like Family: Growing Up in Other People's Houses, and the debut novel, A Ticket to Ride.

Circling the Sun takes us from the brittle glamour of the 1920s Happy Valley set, fuelled by gin and adultery, to the loneliness of life as a scandalous divorcee; from the spectacular beauty of the Kenyan landscape to the manicured lawns of Nairobi’s Muthaiga Club. Beryl begins a series of disposable sexual relationships that continue during and in between her three marriages. But then she married someone else and I was slightly disappointed but still more hooked than I had been.

Serve " choucroute garnie with sprigs of fresh rosemary and spaghetti with mussels and black squid ink " like Beryl and Mansfield ate on their honeymoon.

There are the lights of Cork and the lights are wet; they are drenched in Irish rain, and I am above them and dry.She would become the youngest licensed horse trainer, and first women in the world, at the age of eighteen. Markham generally has a walk-on part in accounts of Out of Africa-era Kenya, but here she is the energetic, captivating centre of a richly evoked colonial world . Most of their time is spent drinking, taking drugs, hunting, and having sex with one another, including each other's husbands and wives. This is a banquet you will not want to miss as it ignites all your senses and satisfies while leaving you wanting more.

Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times.I respected and admired him through and through, and if the love I felt for him wasn't exactly the kind that could send me over the top of mountain on horseback in the middle of the night, it was quietly solid. How close people could be to us when they had gone as far away as possible, to the edges of the map. That’s not the fault of McClain — this is a biographical novel, after all, and the warts are very much in evidence. A woman doesn't enter a marriage because, even though it would have provided financial security, she wasn't in love with him and it "didn't feel right". The nostalgia of the tough but idyllic life on the African savannas are so vividly described in this book.