"Masai Dreaming"

by Justin Cartwright

I was attracted by the title of a book, The Song Before It Is Sung, when it was reviewed in the New York Times. I hadn’t heard of the author, Justin Cartwright, which was odd since I follow British authors with some avidity. How someone who has received such recognition from the literary critics escaped me, made me doubly eager to read the book praised in The Times book section. However, the library had not yet stocked The Song Before It Is Sung, so I settled on Masai Dreaming, Cartwright’s 1993 publication.

Tim Curtiz, a journalist, is hired by Hollywood producer, S. O. Letterman to research a script for a movie about Claudia Cohn-Casson, an ethnologist who lived among the Masai during Word War II in Kenya before her fateful return to her home in Paris. On the eve of departing for Africa to carry out his assignment, Curtiz discovers that Victoria, the woman he loves has had an affair with another man. He is assailed with graphic visions of Victoria’s naked betrayal. Even as he becomes fascinated by the facts he unearths among the Masai and from Claudia Cohn-Casson’s lover, Tom Fairfax, he cannot free himself of resolving his conflicted feelings for Victoria.

It is a complex novel, but never gratuitous in using an unusually rich mix of points of view and shifts in time and place. The questions posed and the meanings Cartwright seeks to draw from the events in the life of a beautiful, intelligent woman dedicated to proving the universality of the spirit are worthy of our attention.

The contrast of men and women in love, the crass values of film making, the primal bond of cattle with the Masai, and the looming threat of a world at war with ultimate evil provides moments of universal vision, always delivered in a story masterfully told.

I have checked out another book by Justin Cartwright, The Promise of Happiness. That is the best reference I can give to a writer worth every minute I spent with his book, Masai Dreaming.

Review by Don Mac Brown