West with the Night (Audio Editions) [Unabridged] [Audio Cassette]

Beryl Markham (Author), Julie Harris (Narrator)

Book Description

Series: Audio Editions | Publication Date: January 1993

Markham grew up in East Africa, apprenticed as a horse breeder, piloted passengers and supplies in a small plane to remote corners of Africa, and became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west. 6 cassettes.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

One of the most beautifully crafted books I have ever read, with some of the most poetic prose passages I could imagine, such as the following, resonating with a stately and timeless quality so absent in our modern life:

There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city. There is silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt. There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately used, or from a piano with old dust upon its keys, or from anything that has answered to the need of a man, for pleasure or for work. This kind of silence can speak. Its voice may be melancholy, but it is not always so; for the chair may have been left by a laughing child or the last notes of the piano may have been raucous and gay. Whatever the mood or the circumstance, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows. It is a soundless echo.

Born in England in 1902, Markham was taken by her father to East Africa in 1906. She spent her childhood playing with native Maruni children and apprenticing with her father as a trainer and breeder of racehorses. In the 1930s, she became an African bush pilot, and in September 1936, became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west. --This text refers to an alternate Audio Cassette edition.

Review

"...the author's descriptions were so invitingly precise, and the reading by Julie Harris so accomplished, that I was often reluctant to turn off the tape player...For those of you who never met Markham, this is an opportunity." -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 17, 1992

"Julie Harris provides a strong and spirited reading of Beryl Markham's classic story of piloting solo in Africa during the 1920's and 30's: here's another example of how the audio format comes alive and embellishes the written word." -- The Bookwatch, July 1994

"Julie Harris' presentation of Beryl Markham's autobiography is an outstanding success for the audio format. Consider it an essential title for any collection. This is a superb example of the enhancement voice can give to text. The clarity and warmth of Harris' voice perfectly match Markham's exuberance and love of life. Her perfect diction glides smoothly over African names, and she successfully uses dialect and inflection for native characters. The haunting reflections of British East Africa in the 20's and 30's, the airplanes, horses, dogs, and wild animals - present an unforgettable portrait enlivened by the brilliant narration." -- AudioFile, December 1992

"With a narrative style as graceful and elegant as the author's writing, Julie Harris recounts the adventures of this remarkable woman..." -- Booklist, September 15, 1998

"[Beryl Markham] can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers." -- Ernest Hemingway

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Audio Partners; Unabridged edition (January 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0945353723
• ISBN-13: 978-0945353720
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.3 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (168 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,699,624 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #58 in Books > Books on Cassette > Biographies & Memoirs > Women
  • #100 in Books > Books on Cassette > Biographies & Memoirs > Historical

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

112 of 114 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Divided Heart, March 8, 2002

By 

Jena Ball "Jena Ball" (North Carolina, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: West with the Night (Paperback)

No less a writer than Ernest Hemingway said about West with the Night, "As it is she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pigpen. But she can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers." Coming from an author who was renowned for his ego and lack of respect for other writers, this is high praise indeed, and West with the Night deserves it.

The story opens with the author being called in the middle of the night to deliver a tank of oxygen to a dying man. The reason she has been called is because her business is flying a small bi-plane through the wilds of Africa on delivery errands such as these. The flight and subsequent visit with the dying man and his doctor are used to introduce us to Africa - the rich black nights, the stories of her native peoples, the harsh reminder with the appearance of a jackal that "...in Africa there is never any waste."

In this first section we also begin to know and wonder about the author, a native of Britain who was transplanted to African soil at the age of 2 and raised by her father on his farm at Njoro. There her primary playmates were the children of the Nandi Murani tribe and her principle schoolroom the African landscape itself. As Markham puts it, "Africa was the breath and life of my childhood. It is still the host of all my darkest fears, the cradle of 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 favors. It yields nothing, offering much to men of all races."

It is Markham's misfortune, but also her gift, that she could never be fully assimilated by the native people and the landscape. Her father insisted on sending her to school, relatives and friends did their best to expose her to European culture, and in the end Africa itself conspired to force her out of the fold and into the larger world. The end result is a woman who walks a fine and complex line within herself between two radically different perceptions of the world.

Although Markham's story is remarkable based on facts alone - taking us from her childhood haunts to her historic flight across the Atlantic Ocean - it is the elegance and depth of the writing that sets this book apart. When she talks about the horses she and her father bred and raised, for example, it's as if she is stepping into the animals' skins. When she discusses her hunt for a fellow pilot, lost in the bush, it is with total absorption in the moment. This is the kind of book that can make you forget you are reading a book, drawing you into the subtleties of life as Markham knew it - engaging all the senses and ultimately your heart as well.

39 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutly spellbinding--it is a plane ride to another world, August 30, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: West with the Night (Paperback)

I visited Kenya last year and saw this book all over the shelves, and I picked it up. Little did I know, I was picking up one of the best written and most evocative books of all time. I was swept away immediatly by her involving narrative and descriptions. And let me tell you, the descriptions capture the Kenyan landscape and people remarkably well. It is just as wonderful and mysterious as Markham writes. This book transported me to the dazzling age of the 1920's and 30's in Kenya--which is full of fascinating trailblazers. I read a lot of the novel outloud, and her thoughts seemed to become my thoughts. Her anecdotes and experiences are so poignant that they seem to shoot me right through the heart. I want to reread this novel again and again, it is wonderous. Hemingway was right when he said " it is a bloody wonderful book." If you like Markham, you should read Isak Dineson's classic Out of Africa. However, Markham does more soul-searching and delving into herself than Dineson does. You'll recognize some familiar charactars as well. Both are true stories!

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow...a beautiful heck of a book!, September 29, 2002

By 

Elisabeth W. Movius (Shanghai China) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: West with the Night (Paperback)

Mere moments have passed since I closed the back cover on "West with the Night", and already I am missing its world and its voice. It is one of those rare books that can, with the simple fluidity of its narrative, pull you in and engulf you entirely.

I am not a big fan of the memoir, but Markham's (or whoever wrote it) voice is neither bombastic nor humble; she feels less a narrator or subject than a fellow traveller, along with you for the ride. Although the life she lived was extraordinary and compelling, she refreshingly views it in clipped, casual, careful terms, as unimpressed with herself as if she'd been a midwestern housewife, not a pilot and horse trainer in Colonial Africa.

Many readers will approach "West with the Night" out of a pre-existing interest in and knowledge of its era and characters, and will no doubt experience it entirely differently than I did. While a few names rang vague bells, for the most it was an engaging introduction. But I read it as literature, not as history, and enjoyed it immensely as such. I found her small personal anecdotes far more interesting than the accounts of her grand feats. The Atlantic flight that made her famous rounds out the end of the book, but is rather dry and dull compared to her African tales. Stories such as her father's pompous parrot had me in spasms of public giggles.

It is little wonder that Hemmingway praised this book, as the sparse directness of its utilitarian prose makes even the Old Man of the Sea seem a flowery romantic. Its structure can be rather meandering, but in that regard it resembles the contours of memory, which makes me believe Markham did indeed write her own book.