Susie Kelly has the gift of an extraordinary memory. We may, in theory, all have this gift. And we may, in theory, all remember — even if only in our dreams.

But Susie Kelly has an additional gift. She has the ability not only to remember, but also to give verbal expression to those memories in extraordinary form.

If you, as a potential reader — and I use that word “potential” advisedly — are not grabbed hook, line and sinker by the first few sentences, move on. Choose another book. This one is not for you.

But if you are hooked, hold on — and ride this story for the life of it.

I would be hard pressed to call Susie Kelly a ‘stylist’ — at least not in the traditional sense of the word (although what follows immediately might well prove the exception to my little rule). Nor would I call her a prominent punctuationalist. No, Susie’s style is in the choice of her details to remember and relate, and Susie’s punctuation is in the punctilio of those details.

“I’ll never forget sailing through the Suez Canal. Silhouettes of camels, donkeys, men and children glided by on the palmy sandbanks as the sun folded itself from a brilliant red ball into a sliver that slid gracefully from sight into the blackness of the night.” (Chapter 2)

Reading Chapter One, I’m transported to perhaps my favorite animated video of all time — also British — titled “The Snowman” (1982). If fellow Americans have never seen this video, I can’t stress enough how brilliant and memorable the execution of it is. Comparably brilliant and memorable is the prose of Susie Kelly’s first chapter. If you want to get an idea of what things were like for a young child in war-tinged Britain and on a continent torn and ravaged by the same WWII, this is as good as it gets. We in America who were not soldiers at the time know nothing of these conditions — except through film. We were too busy dancing — then making and exporting to Europe the things that would make us rich. It was a new kind of noblesse oblige — and the noblesse in this case was a burgeoning middle class.

As Spartan as the conditions Susie Kelly describes in post-war Britain might’ve been, one can only venture a guess as to how sub-Spartan they must’ve been on the Continent — in any case, probably too subterranean-Spartan to even venture pen to paper (if either of these two was even available at the time).

Quite apart from rendering these expert descriptions of post-war Britain in the first half of her novel, Ms. Kelly reminds us of how much goes through a child’s mind from first cognition through early adolescence. For those of us who are also parents, this can be a harrowing experience — suggesting, as it does, that the proverbial tabula rasa that is a child’s mind corrects the ‘rasa’ in short order by registering, recording, assimilating, decoding and eventually sitting in judgment long before our little darlings first appear to us to be thinking adults.

We can only hope that those same little darlings don’t possess an ability to recall and report equal to that of Susie Kelly!

I’ll be the first to admit that a lot of the vocabulary, setting and events Ms. Kelly describes during her “Kenya era” would’ve been unintelligible to me had I not first read — then seen the film version of — Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa many years ago. Is (or was) Susie Kelly the new Baroness Karen von Blixen? No. Susie’s experience of Kenya was not that of a coffee plantation owner; nor was she born of the Danish nobility — and lucky for us, it and she were not! While we may — in fantasy — identify with Meryl Streep or Robert Redford, we can — in reality — identify more judiciously with Susie Kelly. And how refreshing it was to read that a pre-adolescent Susie Kelly herself could’ve fantasized about marrying the young tribesman, Arap Rono, out of sheer joy and appreciation of his own joie de vivre — even if already at that tender and innocent age, she recognized the social injunctions against marrying a black.

Did I say earlier that Ms. Kelly isn’t a stylist? Maybe not. But the following paragraph from just past the midpoint of the novel would certainly suggest that she’s quite an adequate and sufficient sensualist!

“I loved Cinderella. I loved the smell of her breath when she’d eaten hay, and the smell of her flesh when she sweated. I loved the smell of her droppings in the straw. I loved the gentle way she took a mint from between my lips and rummaged for more in my pockets with her soft nose. I loved the way her ears pricked as soon as she saw me cycle into the yard, and the soft whickering noise she made to greet me. I loved the way she galloped out into the field when I turned her loose, her head and tail high in the air, whinnying her pleasure. I loved the way she would see me from a distance and race across the paddock whinnying, jerking to a halt inches before the gate. I loved her spirit, her enthusiasm, her bravery, her willingness, and the wisdom in her dark eyes. I loved the way she stood quietly dozing in the warm afternoons, one hind leg bent, while I sat and read on the straw in her stable.” (Chapter 16)

At about the same point in the book, however, we see how a pair of controlling parents can induce a child into submissiveness. I have to wonder whether this is a foreshadowing of things to come as Susie Kelly grows older…. All we can say at this point is “Thank God for the neighbors!”

In Chapter 17, Susie enters true adolescence — and we shudder at what’s in store (for us as well as for her!). Nature has this funny way of exerting its gravitational pull, and we suspect it’s going to be straight down to the ground. But then, she did name her horse ‘Cinderella’….

At the beginning of Chapter 25, an entirely new chapter in Susie’s life begins: a son is born. If this sounds a bit like that other famous proclamation in Händel’s Messiah, forgive me. But for Susie, we feel, it’s every bit as portentous as she silently invokes the wisdom of Solomon in her battle with an intrusive mother-in-law.

In Formal Logic, you can’t derive a ‘universal’ from an ‘existential.’ In plain English, this means you can’t reach generalized conclusions on the basis of one instance. Good thing, too — because if you could, you might be tempted to conclude, based on Susie’s experience, that marrying into an Italian family would result in slow death by suffocation.

A few chapters later, a second new chapter (in the form of a baby girl) makes its way into Susie’s life. But shortly thereafter, the culture shock of a move back to England — with all of its attendant rudeness of time-cards and work bells for a woman who’d grown used to a gentle, orderly and comforting Kenya — comes knocking at life’s door. As does a husband grown increasingly indifferent, alcohol-centric, and downright hostile.

At this point, I’ll resist the temptation to let a teaser slip through my fingertips and out onto the keyboard and say simply BUY THIS BOOK: you won’t regret it! I Wish I Could Say I Was Sorry is the kind of autobiography we should all write — or at least read.

RRB
3/08/14
Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A.
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I don't cry. Toward the end of this one, I had tears in my eyes. It's poignant, fun, real, and historical. I don't know of a book I've read lately that has covered in depth a British family at the end of the British occupation of Kenya that really has touched on the heart and soul of that period of time. I highly recommend this book to just about everyone. ( )

Susie Kelly manages to make a heartbreaking story into a beautiful work of art. I Wish I Could Say I’m Sorry is her memoir of growing up in Kenya and moving to England as an adult and mother. She immediately endears readers, making them connect with her as a young girl. I was cheering her on to the very end, hoping this young lady would have a positive turn of luck. Through each difficult challenge Kelly fought back and managed to make a life for her family. It’s really a lovely read. ( )