West with the Night

by Beryl Markham

Your purchase benefits the homeless.

294 pages, Paperback

Published May 3, 1983

About the author

Beryl Markham was a Kenyan aviator born in England (one of the first bush pilots), adventurer, racehorse trainer and author. She was the first person to fly solo, non-stop across the Atlantic from Britain to North America. She wrote about her adventures in her memoir, West with the Night.

Reviews

[Murray ᛘᚢᛦᛦᛅᛁ · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exceptional memoir that begins with her growing up in East Africa and ends with her historic transatlantic flight, east to west. She had a passion for horses and for flying. Her prose is lyrical and compelling. For a time, critics opined she had not written the book, but that has been disproven. This is she.

Her memoir does not mention her three marriages - her surname comes from her second marriage - or her many love affairs (such as with one if not two princes, sons of George V, and also with the man portrayed by Robert Redford in Out of Africa, Denys George Finch Hatton). So far as Denys, she mentions their friendship, one that carried forward until his death in the plane crash that ends the movie.

To get all the little significant details she doesn’t mention, or to discover the story of her entire life, apparently the biography to read is Straight On Till Morning by Mary Lovell. Otherwise, this book is a wonderful read on its own. It’s too bad she didn’t write a few more. An odd part to this story is that after an initial sensation upon its release in 1942, the book was ignored and lost to sight and mind for forty years, until it was rereleased in 1983, only a few years before her death.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

The writing and the story are beautiful. Highly recommend!

[Saphhh ✩°｡⋆⸜ ✮🦈*ੈ✩‧₊˚ · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a woman.

[Shawna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book in the summer of 2000 while on vacation at Pike Street Market in Seattle. I bought it because an actor I admired, who also happened to be a pilot had named it as one of his favorite books. Like most of the books that have been sitting on my shelves for over 20 years, I found it hard to get into, and so I let it sit. After thinking, "you really should read that," for the millionth time, I finally did.

I'll try not to drown it in all of my modern day sensibilities, but Markham was a privileged daughter of a colonizer living in Kenya between the wars. Although she didn't see herself as such. That's not to say she wasn't a smart and capable woman ahead of her time, bold, brave, and living the life she wanted. But as she clearly omitted any discussion of her personal life from this narrative so I also wonder how much of the wages of imperialism she also omitted or wasn't even aware of in that era.

I am by no means an expert in African history but what I have read seems to indicate things weren't rosy for the natives serving their foreign overlords. They were quite often exploited if not maimed or killed as I learned reading "King Leopold's Ghost." Other books I've read about white people trying to survive in Africa usually come to a sober conclusion: the land, the wildlife or the people will either run you off, almost kill you, or kill you violently.

Probably due to the age and style of the work, I often found some chapters to be ponderous before she finally got to the point and told the story. Also, I struggled with her rattling off locations, landmarks, and people without reference point, so I stopped and looked them up. Some of that I'm sure is due to the passage of time, readers immediately after publication might have known exactly what she was referring to. That's probably why this book isn't as widely read as it may once have been. (There's one section where she goes to rescue some friends who have hired native Kenyans to help them, and the native Kenyans are refusing to work without getting fed. They've been trapped without food in a desolate area for 4 days. There seems to be some exasperation and incredulity at them for refusing to work. "Don't you want to help us clear the jungle so a plane could land and deliver food? The answer seems to be a resolute "no," so the white guys had to dig up the land all on their own for Beryl to land, and my, didn't the Brits look terrible after not shaving for 4 days! -- I think back to the Belgian Congolese having their hands severed in punishment for not harvesting enough rubber. But yes, the stubble on those poor Brits.)

*As a morbid addendum, my copy of the book had a name and a phone number in it. I can't help myself, and if I find a book with a name I look it up. I discovered the prior owner of my book was a counselor who was murdered in 1988. Her killer had a stack of business cards and appeared he had committed robberies and at least one rape prior and intended to continue stalking counselors until he was caught. I checked, and he is still in prison as of this writing.

[Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

While Beryl Markham had a fascinating life in Africa, training racehorses and then becoming a woman pilot, parts of this book are interesting and other parts, I found boring to read. I’m glad I read it but do not recommend this biography.