West with the night book review6/1/2023 Reading the book as a writer and a traveler, it inspired me on several levels. Reading the work critically as a feminist, traveler and would-be writer, there is much to reflect on. Both elements incline the reader to reflection with the same pull as a leaf on the current of a slow deep river. As a result, the reader is forced to give equal attention to the content of her story – the dramatic horse races, the exhilarating flights over Africa, the memorable characters she meets – and to the distinctive style in which it is written. But she can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves writers” (Lovell). Her style was shaped under the tutelage of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and it was lauded by Ernest Hemingway, who, after reading West with the Night, said that “I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words… sometimes making an okay pig pen. It is separated from the run-of-the-mill biography genre by her lyrical writing and accompanying knack for evoking places and feelings long past. Beryl Markham’s book is part adventure story, part memoir.
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