Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of Rainbow's End: A Memoir of Childhood, War and an African Farm

Rainbow's End: A Memoir of Childhood, War and an African Farm
reviewed on + 330 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1


I think to fully understand this book, you need to have an educated background into the Rodesian War. That being said, and not having this background this book goes on forever. Beginning in the prologue you are grabbed by the throat and think that you are about to jump on a rollercoaster. Then for the next 150 pages you wallow in the childhood of Lauren St. John as she wanders around Rhodesian with a father (who she engages in a love hate relationship) who is more interested in his own next adventure then in his family and a mother who never wanted to be there in the first place and decides to become a world traveler leaving Lauren to pretty much raise herself Then low and behold (this is acutally the good part) Rhodesia is taken back by the Black population, the whites are being forced out and Lauren realizes that she is a Racist - but it's not her fault she was raised that way - yawn. Right as the book begins to get interesting, boom she jumps back to her personal recollections about riding her horse and all the animals she was raised with. About half this book could have been cut out and it would have been much better.