West with the Night

I do not even know how to accurately review this book. It is a special book. One that showcases Africa in all its splendor. The people, the landscape, the dangers, and the lands serenity are detailed with such a grand literary prose that fills the soul with inspiration. It's an utterly mesmerizing story told with gusto and heart.

Beryl Markham moved to Kenya with her father when she was very young. When she wasn't surrounded by an astonishing array of animals, she traveled to the air and scouted elephants for the locals. She was also an adventurer and a racehorse trainer, but she probably best known for being the first person to fly non-stop from Europe to America alone.

This is the story of an amazing woman.

Read this if...
❖ You want to learn more about Beryl Markham and her journeys throughout Africa.
❖ Have an affinity for animals and want to learn more about those that roam the African landscape.
❖ Want to be captivated by a variety of African tribes' daily lives and learn about some of their history.
❖ You enjoy a bit of literature with your autobiography.
❖ Want a lyrical take on life, death, hope, and comradery.
❖ Like beautifully descriptions of the sounds and adventure that Africa had to offer at the time.
❖ Require a pick-me-up for your soul.

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||”A map says to you. Read me carefully, follow me closely, doubt me not... I am the earth in the palm of your hand.”

||”It is no good telling yourself that one day you will wish you had never made that change; it is no good anticipating regrets. Every tomorrow ought not to resemble every yesterday.”

||”I am incapable of a profound remark on the workings of destiny.”

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The immaculate story of Kenyan born English Aviator Bery Markham. She lived a life of adventure, broke all the rules of life and above all had a penchant for writing. Her autobiography covers the wild life of colonial Kenya to the building up of the country as a game hunters paradise.

Her writing is at times charming and others extremely dry and sort of pompous. The story is one of her life growing up in Africa and eventually taking on livelihoods like horse training and flight-related jobs, which is interesting, but she is kind of personally unremarkable, and also, clearly has an English colonist mindset, which is, you know, sorta icky, to say the least.

A passage I liked: “Menegai Crater overlooks the township and the lake. In the time of man it has breathed no brimstone, and barely a wisp of smoke. But in the annals of the Rift Valley which contains all this as a sea contains a coral atoll or a desert a dune, the time of man is too brief a period to deserve more than incidental recording. Tomorrow, next day, or next year, Menegai may become again the brazier over which some passing deity will, for a casual aeon or so, warm his omnipotent hands. But until then, one can stand safely on its edge, watching the lake of pink and scarlet wings, so far below– the lake that seems to have stolen, for the moment, at least, all the mountain's fire.”

A passage that shows how mundane her mindset is, to have grown up in Africa, around African people, and still somehow find herself superior: “I couldn't help wondering what Africa would have been like if such physique as these Kavirondo had were coupled with equal intelligence – or perhaps I should say with cunning equal to that of their white brethren.” This leads into her speculating on how “progress” hasn't hit Africa yet, but someday it will be filled with “pleasure resorts” and competitive railways advertising themselves as the names of the tribes whose land they would have colonized, and how this is a desirable thing that will take the place from “wasteland” to “paradise”. Ew.

Beautifully written book by an amazing woman who learned to hunt as a child with the Africans who lived nearby, was probably the first and youngest woman licensed for horse training and who then won a major race, who took up flying in the 1920s/1930s and flew dangerous routes including solo west to east from England ... a book Ernest Hemingway said was among his favorites.