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4.05 AVERAGE
4.05 AVERAGE
adventurous
informative
reflective
Beryl, an American by blood, grew up in Africa, riding her father's horses and hunting (at the age of ten!) with her dog Buller and the natives of an African tribe. At age 18, she became professional racehorse trainer (and oh, that race scene was spellbounding). A couple years later, while riding her horse along an African road, she met a pilot who later became her flight mentor. Destiny meets fate meets poetry, and what a story. Beryl is brave and wild and adventurous, and this has led her life to places I will never be; but I so enjoyed seeing them through her eyes, and hearing of them through her beautiful reflective style. If you like memoir, this is well worth it.
Anyone who knows me well understands that I have a thing for books by or about women in which the primary story isn't about their search for the perfect relationship. Unrequited love, when not accompanied by spaceships, the apocalypse, or in the guise of a man in his 50s for his prepubescent stepdaughter, does not happily hold my interest.
So it was with great joy that I happened upon Beryl Markham's memoir of living and working in Africa. What a life! And better for the reader, what a classic and uncluttered writing style that depicted that life on page after page. Markham, a girl and then a woman of the Empire in Africa, lived on her father's grain farm in Kenya. But the book is as much about the air as it is about the land, as Markham was an aviatrix (an absolutely brilliant word).
I liked this book as much for what she left out as for what she put in. Markham makes no mention of her love life, and having explored her various exploits on the internet, her marriages/affairs would have been easy fodder. But those stories would have become The Story and the reader would have missed the far more compelling but less gratuitous relationships between Markham and the local population who lived and worked with her, as well as the genuine friendships with her mentors.
I want to own this book, I liked it so much.
So it was with great joy that I happened upon Beryl Markham's memoir of living and working in Africa. What a life! And better for the reader, what a classic and uncluttered writing style that depicted that life on page after page. Markham, a girl and then a woman of the Empire in Africa, lived on her father's grain farm in Kenya. But the book is as much about the air as it is about the land, as Markham was an aviatrix (an absolutely brilliant word).
I liked this book as much for what she left out as for what she put in. Markham makes no mention of her love life, and having explored her various exploits on the internet, her marriages/affairs would have been easy fodder. But those stories would have become The Story and the reader would have missed the far more compelling but less gratuitous relationships between Markham and the local population who lived and worked with her, as well as the genuine friendships with her mentors.
I want to own this book, I liked it so much.
adventurous
informative
lighthearted
relaxing
medium-paced
adventurous
inspiring
reflective
adventurous
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
This book was a captivating look into a Hemingwayesque character. I enjoyed her descriptions of life as a child and as an adult discovering her passions for horse training and flight. I also like the accounts of hunting and the depth of her experiences. An interesting read a fresh perspective.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death
Moderate: Violence, Colonisation
adventurous
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
A remarkable book about a remarkable woman during a remarkable time!
adventurous
inspiring
slow-paced
2.5 stars. An interesting life. But one that included hunting elephants and I just cannot.
A. Great adventure
Despite viewing colonial Africa more critically through the lens of history, this book remains a wonderful adventure tale of a woman far ahead of her time. Her e,experience of colon I also Africa is at times sharply perceptive. Her description of her brief time in Benghazi is heart breaking in capturing city with a broken spirit.
I
Despite viewing colonial Africa more critically through the lens of history, this book remains a wonderful adventure tale of a woman far ahead of her time. Her e,experience of colon I also Africa is at times sharply perceptive. Her description of her brief time in Benghazi is heart breaking in capturing city with a broken spirit.
I