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 "The Lives of Beryl Markham". Although long (and somewhat depressing given Beryl's licentious living), this book clarified Beryl's male orientation and shed light on the controversy surrounding "West with the Night"'s authorship by Beryl Markham's third husband, the ghost writer Raoul Schumacher. If you want it all, read both. If you want just the stories of Africa, read West with the Night with a grain of salt.