turtleandbea 's review for:

West with the Night by Beryl Markham

3.0

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Markham's writing is lovely and there are many, many enjoyable excerpts that speak to it's quality and poetry. Unfortunately, the story itself falls flat. Stories really. Rather than a cogent narrative, the memoir reads more a disconnected collection of short stories of her life. I think taken one or two chapters at a time, the experience of hearing her story from a first hand perspective would have been more palatable and her writing style more easy to appreciate. Reading through, however, it feels heavy and simply too dense to truly appreciate the excellent writing and what are, once you wade through some of the excess, interesting insights on her life.