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Books : West with the NightIn association with Amazon.comRating:  - Far far better than I anticipated. Great writing.Absolutely captivating personal account of times and places long gone. As a fan of "Heat of the Sun," this book was a treasure. Rating: - West with the NightAs a child growing up with her father in Africa, Beryl Markham faced down lions and wild boar. As an adult she trained race horses before learning to fly airplanes and becoming a bush pilot. Eventually she became the first pilot, female or male, to fly west with the night and cross the Atlantic ocean solo from Europe to North America. Markham brings the African bush to life with stories of boar hunts and elephant hunts. Of horse races and airplane flights over desert terrain. She lived a courageous life in a time when girls were only supposed to wear dresses and play with dolls and flying airplanes was a man's job. Highly inspirational to read! There's so much to talk about in mother-daughter book clubs or any book club. How was Markham's life different from so many of the girls in her time? How would her life have been different if her mother was also in Africa raising her? This book is beautifully written; I've read it three times and each reading I glean more and more from it. I highly recommend it for anyone in high school or older. Rating: - Pure PoetryThis forgotten volume is a beautifully written memoir of Markum's time in Africa in the early 1900s. The writing (some have questioned whether husband Raoul Schumacher was actually the author, or at least collaborator) is vividly descriptive and reads like lyric poetry. Hemingway wrote to a friend that "...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 writers." Consider this passage from an eloquent retelling of a safari hunt that left one man dead when a fatally wounded lion turned on its hunters as they snapped photographs: "Cremation is a smooth word that seeks to conceal the indelicate reality of a human body being baked in fire.....In mid-afternoon on the African veldt under a harsh and revealing sun, it is at best a euphemism. Still, since men cherish the paradox requiring that to insure immortality they must preserve what is most mortal about them, wood was gathered and a fire was built." The whole account, in just four pages, captures the tragedy of it all--animal and human. Beryl Markum, the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west, was a contemporary (and perhaps romantic rival) of Karen Blixen (aka Isak Dinesen) author of the memoir Out of Africa. I highly recommend the audio read by the late Kate Fleming (audio pseudonym: Anna Fields, one of the best audio readers ever and greatly missed). Rating: - More than a memoirMuch more than a memoir, Beryl Markham's work is a means of transport, not dissimilar to her beloved plane. It took me back to the Africa I lived in as a young bride, to its stark beauty, its dignified and desparate people, the language of its silences. Her tale of matter-of-fact mercies, and of cruelty equally unremarkable, is the stuff of life, as full of hope as of despair, for its millions of people. Her sensitivity instructs us in things as disparate as a young zebra's personal quirks, or the way the setting sun reflects off a downed plane creating an illusory lake in the dry Serenghettti. We learn of the hunger of a dying man for news from the city, and of the joy of friendship restored, but mostly, we learn of the heart and mind of a brave, independent woman for whom Africa is, eternally, home. Rating: - An amazing book, no matter who wrote it!Fantastic! I don't care if Beryl Markham wrote this or not (it is rumored that her third husband, a Hollywood ghostwriter, wrote the book). Beryl Markham's story is fascinating: from growing up in East Africa on her father's horse farm, to training race horses, to her time in Africa as a pilot tracking wild game from the air ... all culminating in her historic solo flight across the Atlantic from east to west. This book brings the ultimate forms of praise from me: (1) I could not put it down; and (2) I am now seeking out anything I can find out about this amazing, daring woman. No matter who wrote the book, the use of imagery is astounding. Highly recommended. |
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