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West with the Night

4.16 of 5 stars 4.16 · rating details · 8,360 ratings · 959 reviews

West with the Night is the story of Beryl Markham--aviator, racehorse trainer, beauty--and her life in the Kenya of the 1920s and '30s.

Paperback, 294 pages

Published January 1st 1983 by North Point Press (first published 1942)

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Oct 30, 2012 Hannah rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, 2012-reads, re-read, classics, favorites

Embarrassment of Riches:
(noun; idiomatic) An abundance or overabundance of something; too much of a good thing.

The above perfectly encapsulates my experience of re-reading Beryl Markham's stunning memoir. The only caveat I'd make is that the last part of the definition makes it sound like a bad thing, when in reality the plethora of descriptive and evocative prose to be found within the 294 pages of this book are about as close to reading nirvana as a I am likely to find in my lifetime.

There ar...more

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Nov 11, 2012 Hayes rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2012

Finally finished the review, which I produced in fits and starts.
3.5 stars

Is it a novel, a biography, or an autobiography? Perhaps a bit of all three.

Some parts were remarkable for their simplicity and for what was not said: when she speaks of Tom Black, the man who taught her to fly, or Denys Finch Hatton. Some chapters were almost like poetry, especially when she describes the land and the people near the farm when she grew up.

A fascinating look at a time and place, British East Africa in...more Finally finished the review, which I produced in fits and starts.
3.5 stars

Is it a novel, a biography, or an autobiography? Perhaps a bit of all three.

Some parts were remarkable for their simplicity and for what was not said: when she speaks of Tom Black, the man who taught her to fly, or Denys Finch Hatton. Some chapters were almost like poetry, especially when she describes the land and the people near the farm when she grew up.

A fascinating look at a time and place, British East Africa in the 20s and 30s. I will look for more, for example Out of Africa by Karen Blixen with whom Beryl Markham shared a lover, and perhaps her husband as well. Karen Blixen is oddly absent from this story. On second thought it is not so odd: there are no other women present at all. [ETA: Wrong again: I forgot the brothel keeper!]

The book begins with a flight from Nairobi to Nungwe...

Google Maps urges me to use caution: "This route may be missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths."

... and finishes with a flight to England with Baron von Blixen, which might be an escape (purely conjecture on my part) from the encroaching influence of the Fascists in the area. Again, almost everything was left unsaid and there were only bits of images, more like impressions really, suggesting what was actually happening. But while she finally arrived in Paris, and then later in England, and then crossed the Atlantic (which seemed like an appendix of sorts, an added extra, or perhaps the beginning of the next book), this for me felt like the true end of the book: a farewell to her beloved Africa.

An interesting book and I am glad I read it.
Buddy Read with Jeannette, Joje, Hannah, JanC, Leslie

pp 264-265:

"Like all seaports of the East, Benghazi is blatant and raw; it is weary and it is wise. Once it lived on ivory brought by caravan across the desert, trading this treasure and ostrich feathers and lesser things to an appreciative world, but now it deals in duller stuff--or deals in nothing, waiting for another war to pass, knowing that in reality it has no function except to provide hostelry for armies on the march."

Then oil was discovered in Libya, which changed the balance of power in Italy and in the entire region, and Gaddafi was invented and dis-invented, and several more wars came and and passed.(less)

14 likes · like · see review

Jul 13, 2007 Ian rated it 5 of 5 stars

This letter from Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins in 1942 sums up the book better than I ever could:

"Did you read Beryl Markham's book, West with the Night? I knew her fairly well in Africa and never would have suspected that she could and would put pen to paper except to write in her flyer's log book. As it is, she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished...more

41 likes · like · see review

Oct 31, 2012 Jeannette rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Jeannette by: Hannah

Shelves: buddy-read, biographical-sketches, africa, hannah, 2012-read

Final Rating 3-1/2 stars

If this were a book of poetry, it would merit 5 stars. The author has a way of expressing herself in descriptive passages that convey the mood of the time and the place. Throughout the book there are these beautiful, lyrical expressions that take the reader to an untamed Africa, or evoke the feeling of solitude of a nighttime flight in the starlit sky. But, as a narrative, the story of Markham's life in Africa, it fails for me in places. I found myself impatient with a...more

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Apr 05, 2013 Themis-Athena rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: africa, favorites

Review posted on my own website, ThemisAthena.info.

8 likes · like · see review

Nov 04, 2011 Sparrow rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Fans of Jeannette Walls

Shelves: memoir-biography, motherless-daughters, girls-rule, reviewed, history-of-women, want-a-hardcover-of-my-very-own

Beryl Markham is someone who you would want to meet and study, I think. This story is nuts, but at the same time, it lacks the pull of human relationships that generally carry me through a story. People obviously read for different reasons, but for me it is relationships that pull me through a story – not necessarily romantic relationships, you understand, but the way people interact. Will they be friends? Will they fall in love? Will they betray each other? There is none of that in this book, s...more Beryl Markham is someone who you would want to meet and study, I think. This story is nuts, but at the same time, it lacks the pull of human relationships that generally carry me through a story. People obviously read for different reasons, but for me it is relationships that pull me through a story – not necessarily romantic relationships, you understand, but the way people interact. Will they be friends? Will they fall in love? Will they betray each other? There is none of that in this book, so it is not an obvious fit for me as a reader in that way. It is, however, about a badass woman, who was the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west.

For the most part, people have such interesting lives. I mean, even a person who lives the most normal, or the most domestic, life ever has some kind of story, something to say about life, something about betrayal or compassion or just what it means to be a human. And then there are people like Beryl Markham, who are like, Oh hai, did I ever tell you about the time I almost got eaten by a lion? !!! ???? Whaaa? That is very exotic to me. And then there was that time where she went hunting boar with her buddies, who were Maasai warriors. Oh, and that other time where she saved everybody from floods and killer ants and killer elephants using just her wits and tiny airplanes. So, despite the general absence of human relationships in this book, it’s just an inherently interesting story.

Hemingway was a fan of this book, and it is always interesting to me to read the writers he admired. With Hemingway, I always get this feeling that every sentence is seething with emotion just underneath the surface of what it says, and he’s stuffed that emotion down and tried to nail the sentence shut, but the emotion seeps through the cracks. But, the authors he loves always seem to actually be apathetic. Maybe I’m generalizing too much, but that’s how it seems to me from A Moveable Feast. I think this book is a good example of that. I hadn’t thought about it before, but it seems like it is entirely different to write a memoir where you treat your own story objectively and have compassion for your enemies, and another thing to be generally apathetic. And you don’t get the sense that a woman who flew across the Atlantic, before it was really the thing to do, would have been very apathetic. But, that is what I feel from the writing. Ambition, yes; competitive spirit, yes; but, passion? Not really. It is interesting because I am inclined to assume that Beryl Markham was one of the most passionate people in the twentieth century.

There was another funny thing about this book. I don’t have it in front of me now or I would quote to you. She really back-loads her sentences. I think this might have been something that created the sense of apathy for me. I’m going to give an example of the kind of sentence I’m talking about, even though I don’t have the book, so I can’t give you a quote. It’s something like, “In the heat of the summer, when the warm breezes blew and people sat on their porches drinking lemonade, and before we had heard of airplanes, but after my father had started his flour processing plant, a stampede of elephants flattened our entire village.” It’s like, WHAT? WHOA. That sentence is not about the heat of summer. It is not easy for a stampede of elephants to sneak around, but they got into that sentence pretty stealthily. I guess it is sort of a litotes sentence structure, but I felt tossed about a little bit as a reader.

I read this because my boss and I were talking about the Swahili coast, and how beautiful it is. Markham grew up there and learned to fly planes there. What a beautiful and rough and interesting place to live.

Generally, I think this is a wonderful story. Over and over, I was stunned at how amazing this woman is. And, man, if there is anything that proves that women have always been badass, it is stories like this. I think, for people who love books like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Jeannette Walls's books, this is a great recommendation. You just get this sense that Markham did whatever the fuck she wanted to do, and she could not have cared less if someone told her not to. She just swatted them away and worked with more drive to get what she wanted. I am left with an unfortunate desire to read celebrity gossip about her, though. Who was the woman behind the legend? But, at the same time, I am glad at the dignity of the story, and I am unimpressed at my own unseemly dissatisfaction.(less)

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Oct 18, 2007 Elizabeth rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: worth-reading, strange-faces-far-away-places, people-i-wish-i-knew, books-i-read-over-and-over

The following passage is an example of why I loved this book.

A messenger came from the farm with a story to tell. It was not a story that meant much as stories went in those days. It was about how the war progressed in German East Africa and about a tall young man who was killed in it.

I suppose he was no taller than most who were killed there and no better. It was an ordinary story, but Kibii and I, who knew him well, thought there was no story like it, or one as sad, and we think so now.

The yo...more

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Jan 31, 2009 Jeanette rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: africa, biography-memoir, history, nonfiction, four-star-nonfiction

The order of some of the chapters is somewhat puzzling. I can only guess that she chose what she considered the most memorable events/periods in her life and wrote a chapter about each.
Some of the chapters were way more exciting than others. But overall the writing is quite impressive, considering she wasn't a professional writer. Things were so different in the time she wrote about! Everything was so new----automobiles, airplanes, telephones.

Beryl Markham grew up in British East Africa (now K...more

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May 19, 2008 Elizabeth rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: africa, autobiographical

Reading Markham is like a breath of fresh air. The world of training horses, Africa and airplanes is so deliciously foreign to me, I could have read 500 more pages. I found the writer to be undeniably feminine yet no-nonsense.

I would recommend this book to all my free spirited friends.

6 likes · like · see review

Jan 24, 2013 Lisa (Harmonybites) rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Lisa (Harmonybites) by: The Ultimate Reading List

Shelves: 2013-around-the-world, biography, history, memoir, non-fiction, travel, ultimate-reading-list

The book is a memoir by Beryl Markham, a pioneering record-breaking aviator and horse-trainer. Born in 1902, she came to Kenya when she was around four-years-old and grew up there, and the book covers the years from that childhood to her record-making crossing of the Atlantic in 1936. Her prose in this book was absolutely, utterly beautiful. Don't trust my judgement? Well, maybe you'll take Ernest Hemingway's word for it:

Did you read Beryl Markham's book, West With The Night?... As it is, she ha...more The book is a memoir by Beryl Markham, a pioneering record-breaking aviator and horse-trainer. Born in 1902, she came to Kenya when she was around four-years-old and grew up there, and the book covers the years from that childhood to her record-making crossing of the Atlantic in 1936. Her prose in this book was absolutely, utterly beautiful. Don't trust my judgement? Well, maybe you'll take Ernest Hemingway's word for it:

Did you read Beryl Markham's book, West With The Night?... As it is, she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But [she] can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves writers. The only parts of it that I know about personally, on account of having been there at the time and heard the other people's stories, are absolutely true... I wish you would get it and read it because it is really a bloody wonderful book.

It's particularly her description of Africa I found so mesmerizing. She describes being mauled by a lion, hunting boar with the native Nandi and her brave dog in childhood, scouting elephants for hunts in her biplane, and her experiences with horses from helping one give birth to the breaking of a horse (from the horse's point of view in "Royal Exile") to watching a horse she trained run a race. Writing wise, if anything marred this book, it was that this feels more like a collection of linked short stories than a memoir. Wonderful, beautifully told stories, but I felt that as a memoir it didn't feel connected enough--didn't feel as if it ended so much as it just stopped. Moreover, when I looked up Markham after finishing, I have to admit that (perhaps unfairly) I was annoyed to learn all she had left out. Nothing about her mother, who I had assumed had died before she could remember her--but it turned out had left them. Nothing about her husband she had been married to for 15 years at the time of publication: not a mention--I had assumed she was unmarried. Nothing about her friendship with Karen Blixen (Isak Dineson, author of Out of Africa) with whom she reputedly shared two lovers!

But the picture of colonial Kenya--the people, the landscape, and the wildlife (and her dog Buller and horse Camciscan)--definitely makes this book worth the read.(less)

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Jun 10, 2011 William rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 20-ce, memoir, nonfiction, africa, travel, empire-post-colonial, autobiography

Naturally, when it comes to 1930s African memoirs we first think of the Baroness von Blixen-Finecke's Out of Africa and her stories. Both women have created exceptional works and the one by Beryl Markham (or is it by her husband Raoul Schumacher?) stands the comparison very well. In fact, at least in this work, she seems the writer with the sharper, leaner diction. She also possesses a sense of humor you will never find in such abundance in Dinesen, who works from a far darker palette. Markham's...more

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Feb 20, 2008 Kenny rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone

Shelves: biography

As a pilot and a traveler to Africa myself, I read this book with interest. I was prepared for an exciting travelogue concerning subjects with which I had some commerce. What I was not prepared for was the prose, which flowed like a great river: powerful, subtle, perfectly apt, and remarkably unselfconscious, to wit:

"Africa is never the same to anyone who leaves it and returns again. It is not a land of change, but it is a land of moods and its moods are numberless. It is not fickle, but because...more As a pilot and a traveler to Africa myself, I read this book with interest. I was prepared for an exciting travelogue concerning subjects with which I had some commerce. What I was not prepared for was the prose, which flowed like a great river: powerful, subtle, perfectly apt, and remarkably unselfconscious, to wit:

"Africa is never the same to anyone who leaves it and returns again. It is not a land of change, but it is a land of moods and its moods are numberless. It is not fickle, but because it has mothered not only men, but races, and cradled not only cities, but civilizations -- and seen them die, and see new ones born again -- Africa can be dispassionate, indifferent, warm, or cynical, replete with the weariness of too much wisdom.

"Today Africa may seem to be that ever-promised land, almost achieved; but tomorrow it may be a dark land again, drawn into itself, contemptuous, and impatient with the futility of eager men who have scrambled over it since the experiment of Eden. In the family of continents, Africa is the silent, booding sister, courted for centuries by knight-errant empires -- rejecting them one by one and severally, because she is too sage and a little bored with the importunity of it all.

"Imperious Carthage must have once looked upon Africa as its own province, its future empire, and the sons of the Romans who destroyed that hope, and are today no longer Romans, have retreated with a step rather less firm than Caesar's over routes that knew the rumble of calvary long before Christ.

"All nations lay claim to Africa, but none has wholly possessed her yet. In time she will be taken, yielding... to integrity equal to her own and to wisdom capable of understanding her wisdom and of discerning between wealth and fulfillment. Africa is less a wilderness than a repository of primary and fundamental values, and less a barbaric land than an unfamiliary voice. Barbarism, however bright its trappings, is still alien to her heart."

To which I add my own feeble praise: read "West with the Night." You will never be the same.(less)

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Sep 23, 2007 eleanor rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: adventerous souls, seekers of beauty, readers of all stripes

how is this book such a sleeper?
truly one of the best reads: beautiful, insightful, inspiring, moving... all that you could hope for from a memoir.
highly recommended.
Ernest Hemmingway, the author's friend and admirer, had this to say: "Did you read Beryl Markham's book, West with the Night? I knew her fairly well in Africa and never would have suspected that she could and would put pen to paper except to write in her flyer's log book. As it is, she has written so well, and marvelously well, tha...more

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Mar 20, 2008 Ebookwormy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: carp-500, 2-caution, world-africa

This book was a good read, and a good companion to Out of Africa. However, two things struck me as strange with this work. #1 I felt much as I did with Out of Africa that the author really wasn't telling me the entire story, and #2, I kept having to remind myself that the main character was a woman as, while eloquently written, it didn't seem I was reading a feminine perspective.

So.... as I did with Out of Africa, I checked out a biography and (thankfully) got a good one, Errol Trzebinski's "Th...more

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Mar 20, 2009 Jodi rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: biographies-and-memoirs, africa, 25-favorite-books

It has been years since I read this book, but I remember absolutely adoring it at the time. A lot of that was the energetic writing style, along with the fact of having a strong female character in the book that wasn't easily intimidated.

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Mar 21, 2012 Kathryn rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Kathryn by: Susan Branch

Shelves: audio

This is a difficult one to describe. It's a biography, so beautifully written by Beryl Markham. She ws the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west. She lived in Africa and her descriptions of Africa from the forests, the many kinds of animals to all of the tribes of people who live rhere, I felt as if it was all right there for me to see. Her sriting is so rich with description it lacked a story. Her life story had barely come alive by disc three in listening. It was just...more

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Jan 10, 2009 Stephen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

“As the herd [impala, wildebeest, zebra:] moved it became a carpet of rust-brown and grey and dull red. It was not like a herd of cattle or of sheep because it was wild, and it carried with it the stamp of wilderness and the freedom of a land still more a possession of Nature than of men. To see ten thousand animals untamed and not branded with the symbols of human commerce is like scaling an unconquered mountain for the first time, or like finding a forest without roads or footpaths, or the ble...more

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Dec 03, 2008 Eric_W rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Beryl Markham was an extraordinary lady. She could train race horses to perfection, track lions and elephants, and speak Swahili with the natives. She was the first person to fly the Atlantic solo westbound. She was also an extraordinary writer.
Her autobiography, West With The Night is one of the best books I have listened to in a long time. The cassette version is ably read by Julie Harris. Several of the passages were so striking that we listened to them more than once. I particularly like th...more

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Feb 26, 2013 Mayda rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: adventure, memoir

I am sure that this book appealed to many readers, including the late Ernest Hemingway, but, alas, I am not in that number. I found that the writing, though descriptive, was disjointed and dated. I know Africa was a rough place in the 1930s, but surely there were some things she could have written about that did not involve hunting and killing and whipping horses to train them. I found it amazing that she knew in great detail exactly what her horse was thinking as he dealt with her as a young gi...more

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Feb 13, 2013 Ruth rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, the-unknown-graffiti-artist

c1942: No blurb as this is the old-school 1984 hard cover edition with no dust cover. It was a recommendation from the little man in the Goodreads recommendation formula. It describes a life of a colonial in Africa and I also believe there is some debate as to whether this book was perhaps ghosted by one of the husbands. The writing style is variable but some of the attitudes are hard to read some 70 years on. The most interesting thing to me is that this was a 'lost' book and spent some 40 odd...more

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Jun 17, 2012 Chelsey rated it 4 of 5 stars

Just finished a very interesting and well written autobiography of sorts by Beryl Markham. Her writing is absolutely delicious but at times, I was so caught up in her descriptive metaphors that I forgot what part of the narrative I was in. This is a story based on her life in Africa with her father and her adventures in life as a little girl inAfrica and her adventures as a pilot in the 1930's. She is extremely sheltered from life in so many ways but also lives a life that no one has known in th...more

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Jun 14, 2012 Erin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction

The memoir of Beryl Markham, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west, and the first person to make it from England to North America non-stop. While this feat is remarkable enough, her adventures growing up in Kenya are even more incredible (think lions, elephants, and wild boars) .

Markham writes about her life with great finesse, fading in and out on various scenes rather than trying to capture a full, chronological timeline. There is great beauty in what she chooses to...more

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May 27, 2012 mwthrock rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Did you read Beryl Markham's book, West with the Night? I knew her fairly well in Africa and never would have suspected that she could and would put pen to paper except to write in her flyer's log book. As it is, she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But [she] can write rings ar...more

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Mar 12, 2012 Sarah Beth rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, adventures

Ah, the colonization of Africa. It was kind of difficult to overlook just for the sake of the story. The story (or the memoir, I guess) is amazing, incredibly admirable, but at the same time diminished. At least with Markham you get a bare minimum of sentimentality and the privileged-white-woman-in-Africa type of 'wisdom.'

It's odd how Markham is the only woman among a string of men in this whole book (a one sentence mention doesn't count.) It makes me think she harbors that regrettable contempt...more

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Nov 15, 2011 Austin rated it 4 of 5 stars

West With the Night is a memoir of Beryl Markham’s exciting life, and is the only work she ever authored. Set in the early 1900’s, Markham was one of the first women to ever learn to fly a plane, and became the first to perform a solo flight across the Atlantic from England to North America. Raised in British East Africa, Markham tells many stories of her childhood and the experiences she had growing up in Africa. Here it becomes obvious how much she values her birthplace, and as a result I beli...more

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Sep 22, 2011 Bonnie rated it 5 of 5 stars

I finished Beryl Markham’s remarkable memoir and immediately had to know more about her. Who was this woman who was described by Ernest Hemingway in this way: “she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer….she can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers.” High praise from some one who was not known to think highly of other writers. So why haven’t I ever heard of her? Surprisingly, this was her only literary effort. And...more I finished Beryl Markham’s remarkable memoir and immediately had to know more about her. Who was this woman who was described by Ernest Hemingway in this way: “she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer….she can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers.” High praise from some one who was not known to think highly of other writers. So why haven’t I ever heard of her? Surprisingly, this was her only literary effort. And what an effort it was.

Born in 1902, Markham reached back into her childhood, growing up in British East Africa, playing with native children, helping on her father’s farm as she described her early years and, in detailed narrative, the enigma that is Africa:

“Africa is mystic; it is wild; it is a sweltering inferno; it is a photographer’s paradise; a hunter’s Valhalla; an escapist’s Utopia. It is what you will, and it withstands all interpretations. It is the last vestige of a dead world or the cradle of a shiny new one. To a lot of people, as to myself, it is just ‘home.’ It is all these things but one thing---dull.”(Page 8)

We follow her life as she trains racehorses for a living, scouts the bush country for elephant, and delivers mail and passengers by airplane to the remote corners of Africa. So many times I found myself furiously marking passages because the writing was just staggeringly beautiful and eloquent.

Markham was a woman who lived her life at a hundred miles an hour and wrote this memoir at the age of thirty-six and never another word before her death at eighty-six. To say her prose is lush would be an understatement but nothing prepared me for her solo flight from England to North America, across the North Atlantic, mostly at night, west into the prevailing wind:

“The fear is gone now---not overcome nor reasoned away. It is gone because something else has taken its place; the confidence and the trust, the inherent belief in the security of land underfoot---now this faith is transferred to my plane, because the land has vanished and there is no other tangible thing to fix faith upon. Flight is but momentary escape from the eternal custody of earth.” (Page 284)

I was on the edge of my seat for the whole flight just as if I were sitting on the plane with her. The same as it was when she described the horserace where two horses she trained end up neck and neck at the wire. Oh, and when she described the savageness of the elephant hunt. Or the sorrow of the lion safari. I could go on and on but do yourself a big favor and pick this one up for a delicious read. Very highly recommended.(less)

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May 18, 2011 Karen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Magnificently written and a remarkable adventure. Questions about Markham's authorship are concerning, but putting this issue aside the experience of the book is filled with a unique and crystalline beauty.

This is what Hemingway said:

"Did you read Beryl Markham's book, West with the Night? I knew her fairly well in Africa and never would have suspected that she could and would put pen to paper except to write in her flyer's log book. As it is, she has written so well, and marvelously well, that...more

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Jul 27, 2010 Rowland Bismark rated it 3 of 5 stars

Every now and then the perfect book opens in the perfect place. I opened this remarkable book while sitting water level in a longboat cruising upriver on the Suneri Tenbeling River in Penang, Malaysia on the only route to Taman Negara, a remote national Park. Markham's memoir of her time spent as a bush pilot in British East Africa (now Kenya) in the early years of this century were all the more vibrant and imaginable under the circumstances. What stories, what personal profiles what incredible...more

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May 15, 2010 Lucy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir

This is the story of an amazing woman. She was the first person to fly across the Atlantic from London to Newfoundland... a much more difficult feat than Lindberg's because she was flying against the prevailing winds. Beryl was raised in Africa during the 20's, long before the wars that completely changed the continent. Her childhood seems to have been one of unfettered freedom. She claims, carrying only a spear, to have gone lion hunting with natives who were equally ill-armed. She also raised...more

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Oct 29, 2009 Linda added it

Well, I don't think I will be as prolific as Laura B. or as gifted a writer as Laura M. - but here goes.

Once in a very long while, you come across a book, that you know will stay in your heart forever. This is one of them. I knew after reading the first two paragraphs that this book was a rare wonderful treat. Like an imported Cadbury chocolate that slowly melts in your mouth, silky and smooth, with a lingering taste that begs for more.

West with the Night - even the title is poetic - was writte...more

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About Beryl Markham

Born in England, Beryl (Clutterbuck) Markham moved to a farm near the Great Rift Valley in Kenya (then British East Africa) with her family when she was four years old. She spent an adventurous childhood among native Africans and became the first licensed female horse trainer in Kenya.

She continued to be a non-conformist and trailblazer in both her professional and personal lives, marrying several...more

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The Splendid Outcast: Beryl Markham's African Stories

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Quotes from West with the Night

“I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.” — 391 people liked it

“There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city. There is silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt. There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately used, or from a piano with old dust upon its keys, or from anything that has answered to the need of a man, for pleasure or for work. This kind of silence can speak. Its voice may be melancholy, but it is not always so; for the chair may have been left by a laughing child or the last notes of the piano may have been raucous and gay. Whatever the mood or the circumstance, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows. It is a soundless echo.” — 104 people liked it

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West with the Night

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