by Beryl Markham
Beryl Markharm moved to Africa with her father when she was very young. Her memoir, West with the Night, is centered on her experiences as a pilot, one of the first in Africa, let alone one of the first female ones. The book is episodic, sharing memories of flying as a young woman, hunting as a young girl, training horses at the racetrack. Hers was an unconventional life.
The writing is magnificent. Of Africa, she wrote:
It is still the host of all my darkest fears, the cradle of all mysteries always intriguing, but never wholly solved. It is the remembrance of sunlight and green hills, cool water and the yellow warmth of bright mornings. It is as ruthless as any sea, more uncompromising than its own deserts. It is without temperance in its harshness or in its favours. It yields nothing, offering much to men of all races.While once visiting a neighbor, she was attacked by their pet lion.
The sound of Paddy's roar in my ears will only be duplicated, I think, when the doors of hell slip their wobbly hinges, one day, and give voice and authenticity to the whole panorama of Dante's poetic nightmares. It was an immense roar that encompassed the world and dissolved me in it.While some readers may be disturbed by the story, Beryl seems to have forgiven the lion.
Beryl speaks eloquently and, compared to many of her British contemporaries in Africa, respectfully of the Africans. She describes a Kikuyu dance:
They sang in voices that were so much a part of Africa, so quick to blend with the night and the tranquil veldt and the labyrinths of forest that made their background, that the music seemed without sound. It was like a voice upon another voice, each of the same timbre.She scouted for elephants by plane for people who wanted to hunt them. In the book, she never directly addresses the morality of elephant hunting, which of course was legal in her time. She does hint at it's foolishness.
The essence of elephant-hunting is discomfort in such lavish proportions that only the wealthy can afford it.The writing blends humor amongst the beauty. For example, she relates how she and a friend were waylaid by Italian officials on a flight from East Africa to England, back at a time when frequent stops were required and you couldn't just avoid troublesome areas.
Minutes had begun to accumulate into an hour before still another machine arrived, complete with side-car, and out of which popped an officer draped in a long blue cloak that bore enough medals to afford about the same protection, during the heat of battle, as a bullet-proof vest.The book isn't a biography; it's a meandering memoir that touches only on the aspects Beryl wanted to share. The lack of personal details is an advantage for those of us who might be interested in a book set in Africa for high schoolers as her personal life was...let's say a bit shocking. It's rambling nature centers mostly on Africa and flying in Africa, but her transatlantic flight is the culmination though without a strong connection to the rest of the book.
For our Africa study in tenth grade (Level 5 Year 2 in the Mater Amabilis™ curriculum), I assigned Four Years in Paradise as our travel/adventure book. Then I gave First Son some options for his supplemental geography reading. For the first time, he could choose between:
I will add West with the Night to that list for First Daughter. I think she'd find this book more adventurous than the first two and more light-hearted than the third. (Second term reading is Things Fall Apart; third term is Cry, the Beloved Country.)
I have received nothing in exchange for this honest post. The Amazon links are affiliate links. I first checked this book out from the library and then requested a copy of our own from PaperBackSwap.com (affiliate link).
