Enchanted Evening: Volume III of the Autobiography of M. M. Kaye

Imagine living a life that needs three volumes to recount-- and that's only for the first third of your life. Kaye's writing evokes hauntingly beautiful images. I hate to use a cliche, but reading her autobiography has transported me to another time and place. I *highly* recommend this series!

LOVED it!!!! I enjoyed everything Ms. Kaye wrote about India and that includes her three volume autobiography. It is a shame that she started this books so late and never gave us the rest of her amazing life: back to the UK, traveling with her husband through the 1950s and 60s when she wrote her "Death in...." series. So many things her fans would have liked to know.

...or perhaps this should be subtitled - in which Mollie searches for Mr Right. This is the third volume of MM Kayes hugely enjoyable and readable autobiographies - and they are of her childhood - and in the case of this, the third volume, her young adulthood in India. Yet this book ends in 1939 with the world on the brink of war and India still almost a decade away from independence.Mollie's world is still that of the Raj, the privilege and the society of exiled Englishmen and women who have literally transposed their lives to another country but hugely interesting to read - and funny. MM Kaye is an excellent observationalist and writer - India in all its colours and textures comes alive under her pen. Also her search - or rather perhaps her family's search for a Mr Right to take her off the shelf and (according to her sister-in-law) off their hands. I very much hope this is not the final volume of her book because MM Kaye (last I heard) was still alive and so ending her autobiographies in 1939 when there is such a huge amount of her life left to cover would be a travesty. She didn't even publish her first epic novel until the late 1950's although her mysteries were being written at this early stage. MM Kaye is such a good writer this may be the perfect way to meet her - through her autobiographies.

Am enjoying this third part of M.M.Kaye's autobiography as much as the previous two--maybe more! Her description of the death of her father so mirrors my own, I was reminded of my sister's statement that "nothing ever turns out the way one thinks it will." Ms. Kaye has such a way with description and words, and it is fascinating to read of these last days in countries like China, Japan and India that were irrevocably changed by WWII. I hope there will be a Part IV!! I am filled with a longing for these seemingly gentler times, even though I was born long after they were already a memory to Ms. Kaye.

I just finished Enchanted Evening, and I liked it as much as I've liked all of M. M. Kaye's work. Although not well off financially, she and her family lived in India and China during what seemed like a fun period for women of the English upper classes -- not much to do besides attend parties, travel to exotic locales, and search for a suitable husband. Her stories of the good times she had, plus how she began to support herself with her art and with writing, were a very welcome distraction to me. I am looking forward to reading the next one.