خیلی خوب بود
اصلا انتظار چنین چیزی رو نداشتم
نویسنده توی افریقا و بین مردم بومی بزرگ شده، و چنان توصیفات خوبی از زندگی و طبیعت و اخلاقیات افریقایی ها داره که متعجبتون میکنه
افریقای دیگه ای واستون میسازه، یه تصویر نو و بکر از دوره ای که هنوز دست تکنولوژی نتونسته اون رو آلوده کنه
عشق به افریقا و طبیعت افریقا، عشق به مردم و عشق به اسب و پرواز محور خاطرات بریل مرکام‌ـه
قدرت قلم نویسنده (و ترجمه خوب) واقعا متعجم کرد، کسی نویسنده نباشه و بعنوان اولین نوشته این کتاب رو بنویسه؟
من که لذت بردم

3.5 stars

After reading about Beryl Markham in Circling the Sun and giving it 5 stars, I'd heard this memoir was even better. Is truth better than fiction, I wondered.

Her memories flowed like sweet wine and many were familiar from reading the other book. The writing is lovely; impressive. But some of the early chapters dragged. It consistently put me to sleep, often right after making me think how perfect the word choices were. I suspect for me at least some of the story got lost amid the beauty of the writing.

Favorite stories where there was some excitement were her encounters with lions and with elephants (much interaction with Baron Bror von Blixen). She had a deep understanding of what made elephants tick, and seemed to adore them. Yet-- those safaris in which she participated, the killings for a piece of ivory, too common then and now.

Then finally the chapter, West with the Night, when Beryl accepts a challenge to fly solo from Ireland to North America. Again simply lovely descriptions of nature and man. Being alone in the plane for hours on end gave her much time to be reflective, and to then agree to write about it. A classic after all, and I wish I could explain why truth is hardly ever as satisfying to me as fiction, historical fiction that is.

"West with the Night" is the memoir of a woman who loved adventure. Beryl Markham spent most of her childhood in British East Africa (Kenya) where her father owned a horse farm. She grew up playing with the native African children, spending her time playing games and learning to hunt with the young boys rather than making friends with the native girls. As an adult she became a horse trainer and a pilot. Beryl Markham is most famous for being the first woman to pilot a plane from east to west across the Atlantic in 1936. As both a horse trainer and a pilot, she was a woman doing work in a man's world.

Her love of Africa and her connection to nature are evident in the book. She shows the reader the sights, smells, and sounds of the continent. She admires the natives' skill in hunting, and enjoys the African culture and storytelling. Her dog and her horses are very important in her life. Although she seems to respect the jungle animals in her early life, she works as a pilot spotting elephants for the big game hunters later. As the book moved on, it shows more effects of colonialism and the buildup of defenses in northern Africa in the early 1930s.

The book is well-written, and the author knows how to build up suspense as she tells about the dangerous situations Markham finds herself in during her adventures. She has selectively written about certain areas of her life, but does not include memories of her mother, her governess, her three marriages, her son, or her numerous affairs. The reader will have to pick up another book to learn about the rest of her life.

Her third husband, Raoul Schumacher, was a professional ghost writer. There is a question of whether he actually wrote the book after he read her notes and listened to Markham's stories. At the very least, it is thought that he edited her writing. But even if we don't know the true author of the book, it is a wonderful story of a remarkable woman and of Africa in the 1920s and 1930s.

What a woman, what a story! Beryl Markham spent her life doing just as she pleased, damn society, damn propriety, damn it all. A childhood running free with the African natives, learning to hunt and survive; then becoming the first woman horse trainer in Kenya, and being successful; then learning to fly when aviation was in it's infancy, and making a living at it as one of the first women aviators. Not to mention being the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from East to West in 1936. There were lovers, and husbands, and friends, and a life filled with adventure. Somewhere along the way, she learned to write and gave us this book.

I first read "Circling the Sun" by Paula McLain, which is a fictionalized account of Beryl Markham's life. It was well written and whetted my appetite to learn more about this remarkable woman. I'm glad I read that first, because Markham's own account of her life leaves out the husbands and lovers, just giving us what was important to her, the work of her life, the horses and airplanes, and her accomplishments. You get the feeling that the men in her life were just a way to keep things from getting too dull.
She was a true renaissance woman......and did I mention she could write?

I LOVED this book. Had to watch the Meryl Streep film Out of Africa after reading this book.

I've read this book a couple of times and each time it is so absorbing that I just carry on as though I've never seen it before. Surely that has to be one mark of a great writer.

I finished this book a couple of weeks ago and was putting off writing this review. I was unsure why, but then realized that somehow writing the review here is the final closing of the book for me. If I didn't write it down I could still hold on to the author Beryl Markham and her remarkable stories a little longer. Since this book I read another short book and am now well into another novel so I decided that with a heavy heart that I could finally put, "West with the Night" to sleep.

This book has been staring at me from the bookshelves at my parents home for years. My eyes must have grazed the cover a thousand times before I picked it up as a current book club selection. I had a where have you been all of my life moment during the first few chapters. I also had a stern discussion with my parents for not putting this book in my hands earlier. My mother received this book back in '87 from a former boss who inscribed on the front page," Dear Marilyn, I thought about you as I read this remarkable book. You and Ms. Markham have much in common - an independent spirit, bright and very adventuresome." Even though since '87 my mothers health has declined from MS she still has that independent spirit that I love in her and Ms. Markham.

I knew that this book was a nonfiction work about Africa and airplanes in the 1930's. Honestly, I was not that intrigued. I pleasantly surprised from the first page how immediately and fully I was pulled into the adventures and life of Beryl Markham. She writes several experiences from her childhood that endeared me to her and reminded me a bit of Scout from, "To Kill a Mockingbird." There were gripping scenes with lions and elephants that made my heart pound as well as friendships and relationship that were deep and abiding. As she grows up I continued to love her adventurous spirit. The writing was eloquent and had such an easy natural flow that it was hard to put down.

My only criticism is that I felt like Markham was holding back a bit on her personal life. I get that especially considering the time period, but it would have made for an even for fascinating and interesting read. That being said it is still one of the best books I've read in a long time!

My favorite advice from her dad was, "Work and hope. But never hope more than you work."

Fascinating memoir by Beryl Markham, a British woman raised in what we would today call Kenya, who as a young woman worked as a freelance airplane pilot. She earned headlines by breaking a flying record. The book covers her childhood and early career (which are pretty interesting in themselves) and culminates with her famous flight. It's quite the picture of a culture and lifestyle that are very foreign today.

This memoir by Beryl Markham is a gem on every level. Not only was her life filled with adventure, but her writing style is beautiful and poetic. I could choose almost any sentence as an example, but here is one: "The trees that guard the thatched hut where I live stand in disorganized ranks, a regiment at ease, and lay their shadows on the ground like lances carried too long." (In the words of Ernest Hemingway: "She has written so marvellously well that I feel ashamed of myself as a writer.")
Born in 1902 and raised on a farm in Africa, this remarkable woman trained racehorses and then became a commercial pilot. She was the first woman to fly solo cross the Atlantic from east to west, basically flying "West with the Night." She led such an action-packed life (for example, she was attacked and almost eaten by a lion) that a single volume cannot begin to do it justice.
Now I want to read a biography of Beryl Markham, one that reveals more about her personal life. In this memoir, she never mentions love affairs, marriages, or children. I'm eager to learn more about this intriguing character.

You know what's great about this memoir? She never mentions any of her romantic relationships, none of the men are love interests and we don't have to sit through any of that crap. I did read her bio after and there was tons of stuff she could have mentioned about her love life but instead it's all about her accomplishments. My kind of lady.

"I stumble out of the plane and sink to my knees in muck and stand there foolishly staring, not at the lifeless land, but at my watch. Twenty-one hours and twenty-five minutes. Atlantic flight. Abingdon, England, to a nameless swamp – nonstop."

It is probably sacrilege to have read West with the Night and not to have loved it more.

To be fair, when I read the book I could hardly put it down. It was a charmingly written memoir of what must have been an extraordinarily interesting person. Beryl Markham was funny, witty, daring, confident, dashing...in short all one would associate with an adventurer. Most strikingly, she was not at all what I would have expected from someone growing up in colonial Africa, where expats are said to have formed an exclusive society about whom history books and literature seem to like reporting in terms of stereotypes and cliches.

Markham was not like that. She grew up in the remote wilderness of Kenya as an equal to the local Nandi and Masai and it seems from her writing that she saw herself as African.

"Competitors in conquest have overlooked the vital soul of Africa herself, from which emanates the true resistance to conquest. The soul is not dead, but silent, the wisdom not lacking, but of such simplicity as to be counted non-existent in the tinker’s mind of modern civilization. Africa is of an ancient age and the blood of many of her peoples is as venerable and as chaste as truth. What upstart race, sprung from some recent, callow century to arm itself with steel and boastfulness, can match in purity the blood of a single Masai Murani whose heritage may have stemmed not far from Eden?"

The book is full of passages that show her reverence for Africa in a way that is neither sentimental nor frightened by the unknown. Africa is Africa - what may seem as drama to European society is just a fact of life. To some extent, Markham even makes fun of the attitudes that seem to long for the theatrical:

"I do not suggest that the lion of the Serengetti have become so blasé about the modern explorer’s motion-picture camera that their posing has already become a kind of Hollywoodian habit. But many of them have so often been bribed with fresh-killed zebra or other delicacies that it is sometimes possible to advance with photographic equipment to within thirty or forty yards of them if the approach is made in an automobile. To venture that close on foot, however, would mean the sudden shattering of any kindly belief that the similarity of the lion and the pussy cat goes much beyond their whiskers. But then, since men still live by the sword, it is a little optimistic to expect the lion to withdraw his claws, handicapped as he is by his inability to read our better effusions about the immorality of bloodshed."

However, on finishing the book, I realised that even though I enjoy reading about her exploits - nearly being mauled by a lion, becoming a racehorse trainer, taking up flying, and organising safaris with Bror Blixen - there was something amiss with the recollection of stories. There was a guarded hesitation about the way she told the stories.

Markham, of course, is known for being a famous aviatrix but she is more famous for being one of the cornerstones of the love triangle described in the oh-so-famous Out of Africa - except that Karen Blixen does not mention her. Markham in return writes much about Denys Finch-Hatton and Bror Blixen, but does not mention Blixen's wife.

So, despite the humorous eloquence of Markham's book, I was left wondering what other relevant details were left out. Not that it is necessary for West with the Night to be a truthful, tell-all memoir. Not at all. It was just that the book seemed to suffer from a lack of credibility once I read more about the characters involved in her life.

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 humor--and her penchant for compression--is evident from the first page; however, it is not until I got to the chapter "Why Do We Fly" and its successor "He Was A Good Lion," that the narrative becomes almost magical. I can see why Hemingway (see his Selected Letters: 1917-1961) raved about West With the Night, calling it "...a bloody wonderful book." When Markham comes to the description of her father's farm in Njoro one is struck by the similarity with another frontier narrative, Willa Cather's My Ántonia. I felt it particularly keenly in the description of the growth of the farm and its ever increasing "productivity." Today we would call that sort of growth rape of the land. Today, reading such an account of colonial "progress" it's hard not to think of the the loss of biodiversity and the impact on indigenous peoples. Writing in 1940, however, this was not a perspective the author was even minutely aware of, and so the book becomes darker for the present day reader in a way it could probably not have been for Ms. Markham's first reading public.