West with the Night

This is about the 8th purchase of this book. I read it in the 80s, and have bought several for gifts for my girlfriends. Beryl Markham is a strong woman and very creative throughout her whole life. It proves that gender shouldn't stand in the way of what you can do in life!

I was enthralled with this book from beginning to end. It is a fascinating biography of a remarkable woman and her accomplishments. But it is much more than a biography; in telling her story, Beryl Markham intimately and masterfully leads us through the years and adventures and places of her life.

As I flew through the pages, I couldn't help but experience a sweet fondness - almost as though I had somehow, through her eloquence, assimilated my own sanguine memories - for the things of her life, the things she loved; her Africa was my Africa.

Any person who has ever admitted to harboring prejudice - and we all do - should read this book. Beryl Markham accomplished great historically notable things, but her real legacy may be that in telling of her life, she introduces to us people, our earthly brothers, dwellers upon the Dark Continent, in a light that allows us to love them as kindred souls.

The book is inspiring, delightful and occasionally surprising as heroes emerge from unlikely places; real men and women of true character. It is a masterful expose with wonderful and enlightening narratives of the geography, vegetation, people and the wild and domestic animals of Beryl Markham's East Africa.

I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in adventure, aviation, humanity, horses, geography, world history, self governance, and everyone who savors life and seeks to be enriched with knowledge of the lives and ways of the great ones who have gone before us. Five Stars are well earned! -Obelus

I've been listening to this audio recording on CD, read by Julie Harris, of "West with the Night" and I have to warn you that it is not to the standard I would willingly pay. I checked this item out from our library and I must tell you there are definite problems with this production.

I am in total agreement with other reviewers concerning the book. I have read the book and Beryl's (or whomever's) words can take your mind to East Africa - the smells, the sounds, the people! The problem is that this production has too many flaws.

First, the reader often magnifies her voice at inappropriate times, causing the listener to wince in pain. Most of the time, she reads at an acceptable volume and so you adjust your controls to listen, then, all of a sudden, she will raise her voice, as at the beginning of a sentence, and nearly split your ear drums. Then, she settles back into her normal volume.

That said, I could live with that one flaw...

However, another problem is that she often breaks off in mid-sentence or thought, pausing the recorder and then starting back up. Consequently, there is a noticeable gap in the reading. It virtually ruins the effect on many occasions.

Finally, in this production, you can hear the reader turning the pages and she often hesitates as she does so, so that you can't help but notice!!

All of these simply add up to a poor production of an excellent book. My recommendation is to try a different audio product (which I will do next).

Markham's stories of hunting warthogs, stalking elephants, and being "moderately eaten by a lion" are some of the funniest and most vivid stories I have read. I put this book down with a profound regret for having lost so much of the world which she speaks of. My vocabulary is not adequate to describe the humanity and wit with which she has infused this book. So let me quote a few of the passages from this wonderful book so you may decide if you will enjoy her style of prose.

"I know animals more gallant thant the African warthog, but none more courageous...His eyes are small and lightless and capable of but one exression - suspicion. What he does not understand, he suspects, and what he suspects, he fights."

While visiting a dying man in a remote african outpost, she describes the conversation. "His voice was soft and controlled, and very tired. 'It's been four years since I left Nairobi, and there haven't been many letters.' He ran the tip of his tongue over his lips and attempted a smile. 'People forget,' he added. 'It's easy for a whole group of people to forget just one, but if you're very long in a place like this you remember everybody you ever met. You even worry about people you never liked; you get nostalgic about your enemies. It's all something to think about and it all helps.'"

And she goes on to describe his agony. "He will lie in his bed feeling the minutes and hours pass through his body like an endless ribbon of pain because time becomes pain then. Light and darkness become pain; all his senses exist only to receive it, to transmit to his mind again and again, with ceaseless repetition, the simple fact that now he is dying."

And here is her description of the hut the dying man lay in. "Here was poverty - poverty of women to help, poverty of hope, and even of life. For all I knew there might have been handfuls of gold buried in that hut, but if there was, it was the poorest comfort of all."

To paraphrase a quote from a letter Earnest Hemingway wrote to a friend about this book..."she has written so well, and marvellously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer...she can write rings around all of us...I wish you would get it and read it because it is really a bloody wonderful book"...He went on to say he heard she was a real...how do I say? A real female dog, but then some speculate Papa's advances were rebuffed so he did not like her personally.
I first read the book years ago and thought it was one of the best I have read. Years later I had an oppurtunity to travel to Kenya on a Motorcycle Safari with my brother Charlie Williams, he was to write a story for Trail Rider Magazine and I was to take the photos, I just found the story again on the TrailRider web site its one of them dot com sites.I suggested to my brother to read the book before our trip and I reread and was delighted to find we were going to travel through the same country she lived and wrote. She wrote so well about flying reminding me of our off road adventures in Kenya where you are often cruising miles of empty dirt roads solo, Hemingway was dead on, that girl sure could write good! Reading about the Lions of Tsavo however gave a little more edge to the trip, I reminded my brother that his snoring mimicked perfectly a Lioness in heat, he did not relent. I dunno read the book, and if you go to Kenya go on a offroad motorcycle otherwise you are going to be beaten senseless in the back of a dusty range rover, tenderised just right for a maneless lion to eat ya up like a White Castle hamburger, hold the mayo.