Looking Back - West With the Night

Looking Back... In an effort to transfer my book journal entries over to this blog, I'm going to attempt to post (in chronological order) an entry every Friday. I may or may not add extra commentary to what I jotted down in these journals.

West with the Night by Beryl Markham

Nonfiction

1983 North Point Press (first published in 1942)

Finished on February 21, 2001

Rating: 2/5 (Fair)

Publisher's Blurb:

The classic memoir of Africa, aviation, and adventure—the inspiration for Paula McLain’s Circling the Sun and “a bloody wonderful book” (Ernest Hemingway).

Beryl Markham’s life story is a true epic. Not only did she set records and break barriers as a pilot, she shattered societal expectations, threw herself into torrid love affairs, survived desperate crash landings—and chronicled everything. A contemporary of Karen Blixen (better known as Isak Dinesen, the author of Out of Africa), Markham left an enduring memoir that soars with astounding candor and shimmering insights.

A rebel from a young age, the British-born Markham was raised in Kenya’s unforgiving farmlands. She trained as a bush pilot at a time when most Africans had never seen a plane. In 1936, she accepted the ultimate challenge: to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean from east to west, a feat that fellow female aviator Amelia Earhart had completed in reverse just a few years before. Markham’s successes and her failures—and her deep, lifelong love of the “soul of Africa”—are all told here with wrenching honesty and agile wit.

Hailed as “one of the greatest adventure books of all time” by Newsweek and “the sort of book that makes you think human beings can do anything” by the New York Times, West with the Night remains a powerful testament to one of the iconic lives of the twentieth century.

My Original Thoughts (2001):

I read this for my book group, and while I'm glad I did, I didn't really enjoy it. I thought a lot of the chapters were dull and wished it had been more about her flight across the Atlantic, rather than so much of her childhood. Some chapters were interesting (hunting, training horses, etc.), but definitely not a page-turner. Could it have really been written by one of her husbands?

My Current Thoughts:

I was not aware that Paula McLain had written a historical novel about Markham. I'll have to give Circling the Sun a try. Maybe I'll enjoy it more than Markham's memoir.