Memoir Reading Blog #1

The novel that I've selected for my Memoir Reading Blog is called My Heart is Africa. The novel retells the experience of Scott Griffin, a successful businessman and pilot. Griffin signed on with the Flying Doctors Service in 1996 for a two-year term. The Flying Doctors Service is a branch of AMREF that provides routine and emergency medical aid to remote African communities. The beginning of the memoir recounts Griffin's flight from Canada to Nairobi in his single-engine Cessna 180, named Charlie Foxtrot Whisky Mike Juliet. Departing from St. John's, Newfoundland, Griffin flies to the Azores, refuels there, then passes through Portugal, Algeria, Malta, and Cyprus on his way to Luxor, Egypt. From Luxor, Griffin is poised to enter Africa. After several in flight malfunctions and roughly 50 hours of flight time, Africa is within his reach.

From the beginning of the memoir I enjoyed Griffin's descriptive detail. Since this part of the novel takes place mostly in his plane, the descriptions that he can give of scenery are unbelievable. Griffin's bird's eye view of scenery as he made his way to Africa must have been phenomenal to have compelled him to write with such detail.

"Even more impressive is the night sky over the desert at Luxor. It fires the imagination. The sun sinks below the western hills of Luxor in a conflagration of red and orange, burning the desert. Suddenly, a fall of midnight blue ushers in the first magnitude stars - the early arrivals. A curtain of darkness spreads over the desert, hosting a crowd of lesser stars., the smaller stitches of heaven."

Examples of descriptive detail such as this are frequent in My Heart is Africa. They are a great addition to the novel, as they give you a sense of perspective and an image of the beauty of the natural world.