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Since I was waiting for this book to go on sale, I just finished it. The writing was beautiful. I haven't read anything about Beryl's story other than this book, but it does strike one as odd that someone who skipped out on her grammar lessons to go boar hunting would develop such wonderful writing skills. The horse sections were slow for me - it isn't an interest of mine. I wanted to get back to the planes, as that what the book was billed as being about. I loved the descriptions of what it was like to live in such a wild country, where you had to fall asleep at night wondering if your dog (or you) were to be dragged off by leopards at midnight. The actual transatlantic flight section was short, rushed, and at the very end of the book. For an autobiography, it was incomplete. Looking at a picture of her pilot licence at the end of the book, you see that she was married but there is no mention of that. I read here that she had a brother, who was also mysteriously absent. It makes the book feel more like an anthology of short stories of events that happened in her life. A more detailed and complete biography with background of the characters involved would actually have been more interesting.
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