From Westchester Libraries
Bravo to her for now fictionalizing the grandly adventurous, passionate,
and scandalous life of British East African Beryl Markham, the first
licensed woman horse trainer and breeder on the continent and an
intrepid, record-setting pilot. Ernest Hemingway knew and admired
Markham and raved about her breathtaking autobiography, West with the
Night (1942), which McLain selectively mines. We meet Beryl as a child
abandoned by her mother and allowed to run free as her father raises
Thoroughbreds. Fearless, curious, and strong, Beryl learns a warrior's
skills with Kibii, a Kipsigis boy, and dreams of a life larger than the
confines of domesticity. She resolutely finds her way to daredevilry and
terror, love and ostracism as she undertakes the sort of risky and
exhilarating things men do even as she suffers through disastrous
marriages, homelessness, and a complicated and wrenching entanglement
with coffee grower and writer Karen Blixen (i.e., Isak Dinesen of Out of
Africa fame) and Denys Fitch Hatton, the exciting and elusive man they
both love. McLain sustains a momentum as swift and heart-pounding as one
of Beryl's prize horses at a gallop as she focuses on the romance,
glamour, and drama of Beryl's blazing life, creating a seductive work of
popular historical fiction with sure-fire bio-pic potential.
Not sure I am as enthusiastic about this book as this reviewer is, but I did enjoy and learn stuff I didn't know before....always good.
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