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Circling the Sun: A Novel
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Circling the Sun: A Novel
Unavailable
Circling the Sun: A Novel
Audiobook12 hours

Circling the Sun: A Novel

Written by Paula McLain

Narrated by Katharine McEwan

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR, BOOKPAGE, AND SHELF AWARENESS  "Paula McLain is considered the new star of historical fiction, and for good reason. Fans of The Paris Wife will be captivated by Circling the Sun, which . . . is both beautifully written and utterly engrossing."-Ann Patchett, Country Living

Paula McLain, author of the phenomenal bestseller The Paris Wife, now returns with her keenly anticipated new novel, transporting readers to colonial Kenya in the 1920s. Circling the Sun brings to life a fearless and captivating woman-Beryl Markham, a record-setting aviator caught up in a passionate love triangle with safari hunter Denys Finch Hatton and Karen Blixen, who as Isak Dinesen wrote the classic memoir Out of Africa.

Brought to Kenya from England as a child and then abandoned by her mother, Beryl is raised by both her father and the native Kipsigis tribe who share his estate. Her unconventional upbringing transforms Beryl into a bold young woman with a fierce love of all things wild and an inherent understanding of nature's delicate balance. But even the wild child must grow up, and when everything Beryl knows and trusts dissolves, she is catapulted into a string of disastrous relationships.

Beryl forges her own path as a horse trainer, and her uncommon style attracts the eye of the Happy Valley set, a decadent, bohemian community of European expats who also live and love by their own set of rules. But it's the ruggedly charismatic Denys Finch Hatton who ultimately helps Beryl navigate the uncharted territory of her own heart. The intensity of their love reveals Beryl's truest self and her fate: to fly.

Set against the majestic landscape of early-twentieth-century Africa, McLain's powerful tale reveals the extraordinary adventures of a woman before her time, the exhilaration of freedom and its cost, and the tenacity of the human spirit.

Praise for Circling the Sun

"In McLain's confident hands, Beryl Markham crackles to life, and we readers truly understand what made a woman so far ahead of her time believe she had the power to soar."-Jodi Picoult, author of Leaving Time

"Enchanting . . . a worthy heir to [Isak] Dinesen . . . Like Africa as it's so gorgeously depicted here, this novel will never let you go."-The Boston Globe

"Famed aviator Beryl Markham is a novelist's dream. . . . [A] wonderful portrait of a complex woman who lived-defiantly-on her own terms."-People (Book of the Week)

"Circling the Sun soars."-Newsday

"Captivating . . . [an] irresistible novel."-The Seattle Times

"Like its high-flying subject, Circling the Sun is audacious and glamorous and hard not to be drawn in by. Beryl Markham may have married more than once, but she was nobody's wife."-Entertainment Weekly

"[An] eloquent evocation of Beryl's daring life."-O: The Oprah Magazine

"Markham's life is the stuff of legend. . . . McLain has created a voice that is lush and intricate to evoke a character who is enviably brave and independent."-NPR

"Bold, absorbing fiction."-New York Daily News

"Paula McLain has such a gift for bringing characters to life. I loved discovering the singular Beryl Markham, with all her strengths and passions and complexities.”-Jojo Moyes, author of Me Before You

From the Hardcover edition.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 28, 2015
ISBN9780307989918
Unavailable
Circling the Sun: A Novel
Author

Paula McLain

Paula McLain received an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan, and has been a resident of Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. She is the author of two collections of poetry, two novels, and a memoir, and lives in Cleveland with her family.

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Reviews for Circling the Sun

Rating: 3.8996815700636938 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    McLain does a wonderful job of bringing early 20th-century Africa to life, attacking all the reader's senses, and the character of Markham is beautifully and believably drawn. However, the elusive Denys Finch-Hatton remains a self-centered straw man. We still don't know why two strong, intelligent, independent women were so obsessed by him. Most readers are going to want to go on, however, to read both Markham's "West With the Night" and to sample some Isaak Dinesen.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I'm a firm believer that how much you like a book is influenced by what's going on in your life and what you've recently read. This book is exactly what I needed. It hit a lot of high points for me. Historical fiction, Africa, well written. It has made me want to read more about Beryl Markham and I think I will.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I read this book for our bookclub, it was one I picked being the least problematic of the books available in the book-club-in-a-bag scheme where there's 12 copies of a book that you can borrow from the library for 6 weeks. So I thought this was a work of fiction, and it felt like nothing happened. A young girl, Beryl Markham, grows up on a farm in Africa in the colony that would later become Kenya. Her mother can't stand Kenya and lack of society so returns to England and this effects Beryl in some way but I thought the book never addressed how. She grows up with the animals and locals and is a free spirit not confirming to what her governess's expectations of how a young lady should behave. This is the story of white people in Kenya, it is very privileged, even when Beryl is poor she's still training racehorses which seems like a very middle class occupation. She must be an unusual and strong woman to need to have a job to have purpose in her life, she's not dependent on men for money or a role in society, in fact this independence seems to turn men away from her when she does find someone compatible.I don't know if it was the writing that put me off this book or the lack of plot. Getting to the end and finding out she was a real person made me appreciate Beryl a lot more as a person. I'd like to hunt out her memoir and see how it compares to this book. This novelization of her life felt like the worst aspects of a movie bio-pic in print form
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Paula McLain excels at historical fiction that exposes exceptional women of the past, in this case Beryl Markham. Fascination recreation of Beryl's life from childhood in colonial Kenya and horse racing/training to a record breaking flight piloting a plane to the U.S. Set against the majestic landscape of early-twentieth-century Africa, McLain’s powerful tale reveals the extraordinary adventures of a woman before her time, the exhilaration of freedom and its cost, and the tenacity of the human spirit.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A form of historical fiction but I had a hard time with the main character. I found her to be selfish, self-absorbed and trying everything. If she had lived in these times she probably would have followed the hippie lifestyle and then heaven knows where she would wind up. As it was she went from a lonely child in Africa to marrying a man when she was 16 (because her father was loosing their farm), to running away and being kept by someone else, to having a baby and leaving it with the man's family, to training horses and then flying. Great life but rather unbelievable although it is true.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    McLain wows me again. I love this book as I loved "The Paris Wife". A brilliant writer and a beautiful pick for the audio narrating. A woman who is forgotten in many history books and should be brought into them. I just checked my daughter's copy of "goodnight stories for rebel girls" and she is not mentioned there. I am disappointed. Someone with this story of accomplishment on the time when women were property, she should be mentioned more in women's history.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A novelization of the life of Beryl Markham - a woman who I had never heard of before. Her claim to fame is that she was the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean from east to west without any stops - which she did in 1936. The prologue to the book occurs during this flight and as Beryl goes through a crisis having to do with running out of fuel she recalls the events of her life that led her up to that point. I had never heard much about what it was like for British families who colonized Kenya and those parts of the book were pretty interesting. Beryl learned the ins and outs of tribal society and living in the wilds of Africa, and then later has to learn how to deal with British society. But she was never very conventional and her lifelong love of horses also led her to become a horse trainer at a time when women were outsiders in that field. She had many ups and downs on the romantic front as well and some of the poignant parts of the book were about her entanglements with men and how that and her father's monetary losses put her in situations where she was at the mercy of the men in her life - financially at least. I couldn't help but admire the resolve that helped her overcome these difficulties. While this book wasn't one that really stuck with me It was a very enjoyable read and I would recommend it to those who enjoy historical fiction and especially tales of strong, unconventional women.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Just finished listening to this audio today. Loved this story which was read by the author, Paula McLain about the life of Beryl Markham who was raised in Kenya and grew to be a bold young woman who trained horses and learned to fly in spite of her unconventional upbringing. It’s about a woman before her time and all her adventures and the tenacity of her human spirit. Highly recommended!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A wonderful book to get lost in, Circling the Sun is the fictionalized story of Beryl Markham who is best known for being the first woman to fly solo, east to west, across the Atlantic. But this famous flight is where Paula McLain’s book ends. Rather than being a tale of a 1930s era aviatrix, this is the story of a young girl who is abandoned by her mother and raised by her horse trainer father in colonial British East Africa, later known as Kenya. She falls in and out of love, most famously with Karen Blixen’s lover, Denys Finch Hatton, and endures several scandals. Beryl resists the constraints of society, becoming the first woman in Kenya licensed to train race horses. She was also the youngest. And this at a time when women in England were still riding sidesaddle. She was nothing if not a wild child and she lived a remarkable life. She goes through a lot in her young life - the book ends when Markham is only 29 years old, before she made her historic flight at 34. McLain’s descriptions of Kenya and the high society that made it their home and their playground round out the book. Somewhere in the middle it bogged down a bit for me - maybe I cared a little less about her love life than the life she was living. All in all, an entertaining read. Fans of McLain’s The Paris Wife will love this one, too.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Fantastic book about a figure I hadn't known about before - Beryl Markham. At first, I thought the book was about Amelia Earhart. Beryl was a fascinating person who had many lovers and adventures. She was the first female horse trainer in Kenya and the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, solo, from England to America. Paula McLain's writing was also top-notch, folding you effortlessly into the story.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I loved this book! The descriptions of Africa were absolutely amazing.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The imagery of Africa in that golden colonial period has never been so vivid as its depiction in Circling the Sun. I really felt transported and was simultaneously impressed and baffled by Beryl. Her strength and longing for independence were admirable, but as even she said in the novel, seemed to be shaped by a tragic lack of love and direction. She wandered through life essentially alone and somehow she managed to survive and sometimes thrive. I only wish there had been more narrative devoted to her flying days and the later part of her life.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I enjoy a good fictionalized novel about a real person, but this one kind of bored me. I did find myself doing research on Beryl Markham and the rest of the names dropped in this novel and found that much more interesting than what I was reading.
    It sure took me a long time to read it, and I wish that the story would have concentrated more on her later years with maybe a look back on her younger self.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Beryl Markham was quite an interesting woman. Very true to her own heart. I thought the novel was good, but certain aspects of her life were really cut short. Marriages ended without us really knowing why, no real dirt on the scandals, etc. The writing about the beauty of Africa was amazing.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I won an Advanced Reader's Copy from the publisher, PenquinRandomHouse on LibraryThing in exchange for my honest review.The marvelous setting for this historical fiction novel is Colonial Kenya, Africa, during the 1920's. It's the story of Beryl Markham, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic going west to east (London to America). It was fascinating to read about her motherless upbringing and her interactions with the native Kipsigis tribe, her romantic relationships, and her accomplishments as a horse trainer, then as an aviator. She was Kenya's first certified female horse trainer and female professional pilot.Beryl Markham was absolutely fearless, willing to take chances, adventurous and independent. Ms. McClain does a great job in bringing Beryl to life and has many well-developed characters in this novel. It's obvious that she put a great deal of research into Circling the Sun and I admire that. I have not read this talented author's The Paris Wife, but after reading this story, I certainly plan to do that soon.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Circling the Sun is a couple of love stories, entangled and intertwined. These stories are both about loves that give wings to the spirit and provide security and comfort and belonging and joy. As is forever true about love, their objects also cannot be owned, be possessed, but must, themselves, always be free. This is the story of Beryl Markham and the things she loved the most in her life - Denys Finch Hatton, a big game hunter and safari guide, and Kenya, known as British East Africa at the time of the story, the early 1900s. Denys captured Beryl's heart; Kenya owned her soul.Beryl became world famous in 1936 for being the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west, against the prevailing winds. Circling the Sun begins and ends with that flight, but its vast center concentrates on developing the character of Beryl from her early childhood in Kenya, illuminating how she developed the spirit of a warrior, the courage, the stoicism, the energy and the ability to move through fear toward a dangerous objective, frequently living life against the prevailing winds.Beryl's father brought his family to British East Africa when Beryl was four years old. He was an accomplished horse trainer and had decided that his future lay in the colonies, on cheap imperial land. Beryl grew up in Njoro, at the edge of the Great Rift Valley, with the misty blue Mau Forest behind their home and the smoky-purple Aberdare Range in the distance before them. Several Kipsigis families lived in and beyond the forest on Beryl's family's land and Beryl was accepted among them, even being given the name Lakwet ("very little girl"). Running and playing with her lifelong Kipsigis friend Kibii, Kenya's red soil merged with the wrinkles in her skin, took residence under her nails. The endless azure sky filled her eyes and the green hills lengthened her legs and toughened her soles. She competed with Kibii, who was learning to become a warrior, proving her ability to run and move silently through the forest, hunt stealthily, use a bow, a spear, and even a rungu, a deadly throwing club used by young men watching their cattle or goats and thrown at predators, even lions, very effectively dissuading them from attacking the herd. The spirit that would give her the fortitude to persevere in the face of the dangers and setbacks and losses that Beryl would experience in life was born in the green hills of Njoro and it would give her the courage to face the prevailing winds and fly in her own direction.Denys Finch Hatton had a spirit like Beryl's. "Shouldn't" was not a word that either of them included in their vocabularies. They were drawn to each other like leopard moths to the flame. Denys was the long time lover of Karen Blixen, who ran a coffee plantation in the Ngong Hills, a few miles west of Nairobi. (Blixen is famous as the author of "Out of Africa," writing under the pen name of Isak Dinesen). While Denys owned land near Mombasa, on the Indian Ocean, a small cottage on Karen's land, close by her home, was his usual residence and the place from which he started his safaris. He was inspired by poetry, usually carrying around one of his many favorite books. He was a well-known sportsman and one of the first to fly an airplane to spot wildlife for safari. And he was certainly a worthy love!Beryl met Karen at her farm, "Mbogani," in the Ngong Hills. They became good friends, and a triangle was formed. The social mores of the colony allowed "indiscretions" and dalliances, but one had to be somewhat circumspect and always discrete. This proved difficult for Beryl, who had grown up pretty much outside the colony and understood the native Kipsigis better than the society of the colonists. Her yearnings, her successes and her losses tear at the heartstrings of the reader, forming heart music that sometimes soars and sometimes clashes in a terrible cacophony.Paula McLain has written a story bursting with the glorious imagery of Kenya and its animals and people. It also bursts with the excesses and cleavages of the heart, of love fulfilled and love forsaken. It is an exceptionally well-written story that will not be put down and forgotten for a very long time. As an aside, I lived in Africa for several years and have visited Karen Blixen's home in the Ngong Hills and, indeed, have been to many of the locations described in Circling the Sun. McLain's images are so accurate and the way she captures the atmosphere in Kenya created by the light and the dust and the mist and the altitude is just brilliant! It makes me yearn to return and it will make the souls of her readers swoon. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    ****Disclaimer: I received a free ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

    Maybe closer to 3.5 stars than 4 but it's certainly better than 3 stars.

    I had not heard of Beryl Markham prior to reading this book but I was a fan of The Paris Wife by McLain so it was on my to read list.

    I love reading about strong wild women who are fearless enough to make their way in the world without giving a damn what society thinks...especially in times when women didn't have a lot of freedom to do so.
    Beryl was one of the first females to train race horses, one of the first bush pilots, as well as the first female to fly a solo across the Atlantic Ocean from east to west.

    One of my favorite quotes is this line from Sex & the City:
    "Maybe some women aren't meant to be tamed. Maybe they just need to run free until they find someone just as wild to run with them."

    Beryl Markham was this type of woman. All of the best ones are, of course. ;-)

    Beryl tried to find someone just as wild to run with her...and...she did for a brief period. But...as brief as it was...she experienced it & she was happy while she was experiencing it.

    McLain's characters are believable & multi layered. You'll want to scream at a few, shake some sense into a couple, be best friends with one or two, and hug Beryl each time she faces disappointment and/or loss.
    You may find yourself frustrated with Beryl's interactions with men or her falling for the wrong man or for marrying someone for friendship & money not love.
    Other reviewers have complained about this but I would argue 2 points in response:
    1. Isn't that where most successful women make their mistakes? In loving the wrong man? No one is perfect. Even now...in the 21st Century...we women are fantastic at ignoring red flags when it comes to men. Many of us have it together professionally & financially but are dating or are married to men who don't love us or who we don't really love and/or men who aren't deserving of our love.
    2. Beryl lived in the 1920's & that time period didn't really provide single women with many options to survive financially if their families weren't rich.
    It was a completely different time & a completely different game being played by the players than what is being played now by men & women. Those reviewers would have been involved with just as many men as Beryl was when she was looking for love & stability if they didn't find it with the first suitor to express interest. In fact, I seriously doubt some of those reviewers have been involved with less than 4-5 men in their lifetime.

    The setting is described beautifully. You'll feel as though you've stepped into the book & are roaming around Africa with Beryl & her friends. Beryl's love of Africa is accurately portrayed with beautiful metaphors. There are a few sentences that describe the setting so beautifully that you'll read them 2-3 times each.

    The plot is solid. Other reviewers have stated that it is predictable. Ummm....it's historical fiction. Of course it's predictable. It's based on stuff that we know has already happened. If you're looking for surprise twists & unpredictable endings...historical fiction isn't the genre to read.

    All in all...this book was a pleasure to read & I enjoyed the hours I spent in Beryl Markham's story.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I won this ARC on another site. That being said, I think it has been at least a year since I was so distracted by a book that I finished it within 24 hours of starting it. This was enormously entertaining, and even better than The Paris Wife to my mind. I had questioned even signing up for it given that Africa is not a big draw for me, but I went ahead based on my enjoyment of the previous novel. It was captivating, and then to find out that it is more or less true to life was even better (I make an effort not to read too much about books before I start them, I feel it distracts from my open mind, which is why I remained ignorant of the true nature of the novel). Everything about the story was more or less foreign to me, knowing little of Africa, horses or aeroplanes, but it was great entertainment. The characters drew me in - they seemed each to be presented with both their strengths and flaws front and center, and you cared for them even more. I'm interested to see what McLain comes up with next. This lives up to the hype in my opinion.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Slow book, filled with beautiful prose that I just couldn't get into. Too many books, too little time.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I've been torn with how to review this book. It is well written, and Beryl's store, though fictionalized for the sake the book, is very interesting. But something about the book just didn't keep me fully engrossed.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I read Beryl Markham's book West into the Night in the 1980's when the movie "Out of Africa" generated a big interest of life in colonial Kenya. At the time Beryl Markham struck me as a strong, independent woman - an anomaly in British colonial society- and the fact that she, too had a romantic relationship with Denys Finch-Hatton made her an interesting bookend to Karen Blixen's story.Paula McClain breaths new life into Markham's story, concentrating more on her life before flying than after - specifically the trauma of losing her mother at a very young age and then having her pop back into her life when she was an adult and her first career as the first licensed race horse trainer in Africa. Beryl is poirtrayed as headstrong and fearless - always going after what she wants even if that thing belongs to someone else as in the case of Finch-Hatton.I'm not sure I would have liked this woman very much, but I cannot deny that she lived a life of gret adventure on her own terms. This book makes me want to head to the non-fiction section of the library & read more about this remarkable woman.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A surprising biography of Beryl Markham. She was actually a very unhappy young woman who suffered from several bad relationship throughout her life. Repeating the same mistake in relationships got to be boring. There really wasn't a lot of focus on her flying, which was disappointing.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I liked this book, I found the story interesting and I love reading about Kenya. The main character is a strong independent women that was born before her time. In the 1920's and 30's in Kenya with a heavy British population,women were to be subservient and supportive of their husbands.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In a fictional biography, Beryl Markham tells her story of growing up Beryl Clutterbuck in Kenya in the early 1900s, her abandonment by her mother, and eventually becoming a most unconventional woman.Beryl's story is quite remarkable, and I hesitate to go into too much detail in case I'd be giving away details for someone who wants to read the book and doesn't know much about her life. She didn't have much formal schooling but she's exceptionally smart. She grew up wild and independent and pretty much stayed that way. I was drawn in to McLain's sympathetic rendering of Beryl most of the time, though her choices about her relationships really frustrated me at times and the book lulls quite a bit in the middle - though it starts off with a bang and an exciting plane ride, most of it is a character study and not a fast-paced book at all. Beryl as a character left me with such mixed emotions that I'm also rather lukewarm about the book itself.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Based on the life of Beryl Markham who was raised in colonial Kenya. She was abandoned by her mother, raised by her father who trained horses, and then took up the trade herself. She made some spectacularly poor choices in men and was in a love triangle with Isak Dinesen, of Out of Africa fame. She became on the first female horse trainers and one of the first women to fly across the Atlantic. She's a fascinating woman. The book was a little too "romance-y" to rate five stars.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I listened to the audiobook version of this book and while I very much enjoy audiobooks I do wonder if it changes my perception of the book. By the way the narrator was excellent. I admired Beryl Markham's courage and perseverance though I felt like the author, too frequently, placed her on a pedestal, that even her missteps, e.g., marrying the wrong man more than once, was not a fault. A more nuanced perspective would have been better. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book for its depiction of a strong woman so able and willing to cross gender roles in the 1st half of the 20th century. Also for the many characters significant in Beryl's life and the wonderful description of her part of Africa.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Beryl Markham was the first woman to successfully fly across the Atlantic from east to west. Circling the Sun is the fictionalized story of her life, but based on many historical facts. I already knew from the book and movie Out of Africa that life among the white settlers in Kenya in the 1920s was decadent and hedonistic, and I knew that a character based on Markham appeared in the movie. I learned much more about her life in Circling the Sun. Raised by her distant father, married (for the first time) at an early age, she made her own rules because the ones that existed simply didn't apply to her. She became a horse trainer, and much later a pilot, though women weren't "supposed" to do either of those. She flitted in and out of romantic and sexual relationships as she pleased. She didn't think she always made the right decisions, but lived with the consequences. She was a writer too--although that isn't mentioned in this story. Her memoir, West With the Night, is apparently not well known, but was admired by Ernest Hemingway.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This first person narrative is a historical fiction account of Beryl Clutterbutt, a really good story which I enjoyed very much. She spends her formative years on a horse farm in Kenya in Ngoni, near Nairobi with her father. Her mother leaves the family and returns to England when Beryl is 4 years old. She was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1931. Prior to that her life was full of unsupervised play on the farm and with her African friends. She becomes an unconventional, modern, determined, independent, liberal thinking woman, who sets out on her own as a horse trainer. She mingles and socializes with the British upper class which has settled on huge farms in the area. Their excess and social mores are an interesting study on their own, the Happy Valley Set. She becomes great friends with author Karen Blixen and then Denys Finch Hatton. After a failed first marriage, she marries English Nobleman Mansfield Markham, with whom she has a son. Markham refuses to go back to Kenya with their son, son Beryl returns alone.It is Denys, her lover, who introduces her to flying, at which she excels.I really enjoyed the book because it is well written, Markham's life is really interesting and she is surrounded by eccentric and conventional characters. The descriptions of Kenya are breathtaking.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    It was a bad idea to follow up Beryl Markham's excellent autobiography West with the Night with this fictionalized biography that was a disappointment by comparison. The characters were colourless, the book filled with details of illicit relationships. There is no denying that the affairs happened, but Beryl Markham deserves better than what amounts to a romance story with an exotic setting. It has occasionally been thought that Markham's third husband wrote West With the Night, but in an afterword McLain confirms that it was written by Markham because a significant amount of the manuscript was presented to the publisher long before meeting the third husband.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Years ago I read "West with the Night" by Berl Markham and enjoyed it so much. The lives of European expatriates in that era is a fascinating time in social and cultural history in Africa. And of course the book and subsequent movie "Out of Africa" were a part of this culture. Again, author Paula McLain has a keen insight into the motivations and actions of the real people in this time frame and puts them into a flowing and natural story line.