Frances Osborne

The Bolter: Edwardian Heartbreak and High Society Scandal in Kenya by Frances Osborne

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"In 1934 Idina Sackville met the son she had last seen fifteen yars earlier when she shocked high society by running off to Africa with a near-penniless man, abandoning him, his brother and their father.

"So scandalous was Idina's life -- she was said to have had 'lovers without number' -- that it was kept a secret from her great-granddaughter, Frances Osborne. Now Osborne explores her moving tale of betrayal and heartbreak."
~~back cover


I was prepared to thoroughly dislike Idina. She's famous as The Bolter, immortalized in Nancy Mitford's books, among others. A woman who abandons her family, simply for lust? How could I like her? But as I read more and more, I became more & more sympathetic to her. Betrayed by a philandering husband (with ample help from her sister!), Idina chose to end a marriage that had become a sham, and walk away to look elsewhere for happiness. And those were the days when mothers didn't get custody of the children -- the husbands did. The upper class ones, at any rate.

Idina marries again and again, searching for love and stability, which proved elusive. And as a woman ages, love and stability grow more elusive than ever, and women do more and more desperate things in their frantic search for it. In the end, I felt sorry for her more than I condemned her. She was a product of her age, and her options for dealing with the degeneration of her marriage were extremely limited. The disclaimer "She did the best she could with what she knew at the time" sums it up nicely for me.

I was also prepared not to like the book itself. Biographies are generally not my chosen genre. But this book is fascinating. The author pulls together details and background superbly, and you feel as though you're there, watching her life unfold on a movie screen. An excellent book -- well written, charming, devastatingly truthful.