Juliet Barnes

I set out to read this book with absolutely no knowledge of the "Happy Valley Set", except that they were a bunch of partiers. The beginning of the book was fascinating as the author told about what life was like when Lady Idina Sackville ran the "Set" and started the parties that made Happy Valley so infamous.

However, as I continued to read, I found this was much more than just the author's looking for the story of what really happened. Along the way we get swept up in the decaying residences of the former inhabitants and also into a conservation battle having to do with colobus monkeys. There was also a lot of timeline jumping, which made things confusing. I wish the author would have stuck to Idina, Joss, Alice, Jock, and Diana, the main characters of the Happy Valley Set. Through the course of her interviews, the author was made aware of so many more characters and stories, and these are all relayed here, with confusing results.

Different from what I was expecting, and not really in a positive way.… (mer)

I must be confess to be somewhat disappointed with this book dealing with the notorious Happy Valley set which I had been eagerly searching for some time. While it is a fascinating story and the author's love of Africa and its people shines through, the lack of organisation in this rambling story is frustrating. Happy Valley of course was the notorious enclave in Kenya where in the 1930s and 40, British settlers engaged in wholesale partying, orgies, wife-swapping and drugs. It was brought to an effective end by the still unsolved murder of premier party animal Joss Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll in 1941. Juliet Barnes, who was born and lives in Kenya and has family connections to some of the people of Happy Valley, goes searching for what remains of the life of the Happy Valley set, accompanied by Colobus monkey-obsessed Solomon. There's no doubt that Barnes travels are fascinating and she meets some extraordinary people, however, the total lack of organisation of the book, the incessant rambling nature of it and constant name-dropping make it frustratingly hard to follow. Its seems this book was not properly edited. It perhaps would have been better to have concentrated on the key characters that Barnes identifies, namely Erroll, Idina Sackville-West and Alice de Jonge and told their stories in coherent form rather than try to cover the stories of literally hundreds of people in one book. This is not a bad book by any means, the author's research is phenomenal and the story is so intrinsically fascinating, but it could have been so much better.… (mer)

This is a non-fiction story of an area of Kenya named, Happy Valley. In the 1920s to the years after WWII, a group of white, affluent expatriates settled here. They were know for their wild parties of spouse swapping, excessive drinking and drugs and the still unexplained murder of Earl of Errol.

The author did a great job of research. I think over a decade of collecting stories from family members and staff still alive, visiting the old ruins of the homes of this decade and researching past biographies was done by the author, herself a resident of Africa.

Because no one ever confessed to the death of the earl and no witness came forward, the real story died along with all the residents of Happy Valley. The only disappointing part of the book was that the author was not able to really dig into exactly what went on at these parties, what led to the suicides of some of it well known partiers, and what these residents were really like. The author was fantastic in her research, but because all of these eccentric expatriates have died, we only get to scratch the surface of their lives.

Juliet Barnes focuses more on research of the homes and what could be gleaned from biographies and second hand info.

Pretty interesting and fascinating glimpse into this time and era.… (mer)