Tragic Childhood Somehow Spawns Dark Humor in this Memoir

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	• Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood Alexandra Fuller Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2003 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 179 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Tragic & Beautiful

This book is a must-read no matter what one's preferred literary genre may be. Alexandra Fuller has taken me to Africa where she has shared a most incredible childhood and family life. Since reading, I've become completely fascinated with African culture, particularly the white farmers and their battles to make a life and home of this often brutal and merciless land. I hope she continues to grace the world with her unforgettable stories and unique style of telling them.

An African Childhood

Mum says, "Don't come creeping into our room at night." They sleep with loaded guns beside them on the bedside rugs. She says, "Don't startle us when we are sleeping." "Why not?" "We might shoot you". "Oh." "By mistake." "Okay." As it is, there seems a good chance of getting shot on purpose. "Okay, I won't".

And from the first paragraphs of this memoir you can get just a taste of what it was like growing up in the war-ravaged country of Rhodesia. Alexandra "Bobo" Fuller moved to Rhodesia (which eventually became Zimbabwe) when she was just a toddler. Bobo, her sister Vanessa, and her parents moved to a farm on the edge of the country. Both her mother and father join the police reservists and join the war, fighting to keep Rhodesia controlled by the British. The kids are always on the lookout for "terrorists" whom they fear will "cut off their eyelids". They deal with curfews and war, always on the lookout for landmines.

But when the war is over and the Fullers are on the losing side, they have to come to terms with drastic changes. Their farm is auctioned off for "redistribution" to the black families and they are forced to move. From Zimbabwe to Malawi and eventually to Zambia, the Fullers stick together through good times and bad.

This is the story of life seen through the eyes of a child. A life that is tough with many obstacles to overcome. Her parent's racism, war, brutal countryside, and the loss of several siblings makes Bobo into the person she is today. Her mother, after losing 3 children, becomes manic depressive and spends more time drunk than sober. She seems to be more affectionate to her dogs than her daughters. Her father works hard on the farm, trying to keep them afloat. But even he has a hard time dealing the losses that they are faced with. And Bobo herself feels responsible for the death of her sister, Olivia. But through it all, Fuller does a great job of projecting her love for her family and for Africa, her home. It's a wonderfully written book, with lots of anecdotes and pictures from her time in Africa.

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Gone to the Dogs

This is the story of Alexandra ("Bobo") Fuller's gone-to-the-dogs family in 1970's Rhodesia and of a girlhood spent in Africa, born of racist alcoholics who - like so many settlers, in Rhodesia particularly - were too hopelessly dysfunctional to make it in their own country and so thought it wise to go and trash someone else's.

Fuller was raised during the Rhodesian civil war (1971-1979), a time when white children over the age of five "learned how to load an FN rifle magazine, strip and clean all the guns in the house, and ultimately, shoot-to-kill." Fuller regales her readers with tales of how, as a small child, she would respond to African servants' attempts to discipline her with warnings that she could have them fired, "or worse."

Fuller artfully describes her parents' racism, the war and relationships between blacks and whites in the soon-to-become nation of Zimbabwe through a child's relentlessly observing eyes and her remarkable affection for her parents and her brutally oppressed homeland shines through. This affection, in spite of its subjects' prominent flaws, reveals their humanity and allows the reader direct entry into her world. Fuller accurately and artfully portrays bigotry (her own included), segregation, and deprivation.

I have great respect for Alexandra Fuller's writing, but must admit to having grown impatient with and irritated by the racism in this book. As a nasty, self-obsessed child desperately in need of parental oversight, the author gladly takes part in the degradation, segregation and insulting of the Africans she is around. Ms. Fuller doesn't offer any apologies or justifications for her own and her family's intransigent defense of white rule, and recounts her parents boasting "If we could have kept one country white-ruled, it would be an oasis."

My reactions toward this book are mixed. While on the one hand there were wonderful descriptions of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, its peoples and the all-enveloping conflict of the 1970's, I found the stream-of-consciousness style of large tracts of text and tacit acceptance of unrelenting, self-indulgent racism sometimes difficult to deal with.

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Tragic Childhood Somehow Spawns Dark Humor in this Memoir

Set in Africa, this marvelous, unusual memoir provides a very different view of the world which has been written about in the works of Isaak Dinesen and "The Flame Trees of Thika". These famous novels have chronicled an idealized life where whites live in harmony (and domination of) the black natives. Alexandra Fuller world is a very different one. She was the third child of Nicola and Tom Fuller, impoverished white South Africans who are doomed to be on the losing side of the struggle between native Africans and the white establishment. For almost twenty years, Alexandra follows her parents from country to country seeking that perfect white utopia where the natives don't rise up and seize control of the government. The family farms tobacco and runs cattle ranches, struggling to make a living in a world where white domination is fading. Her father spends most of his time away from home, patrolling the countryside against black rebels who sweep down on isolated farms and butcher all the inhabitants. Little five year old Alexandra knows enough not to visit her parents' bedroom in the middle of the night; they might shoot her with the shotguns they keep on the floor. Nicola Fuller is a relentless drunk, whose overwhelming sorrow over the loss of three of her five children and her bitterness over the rise of black power sends her seeking oblivion nearly every night. Despite the underlying despair that engulfs Alexandra's family, she somehow manages to imbue her story with dark humor and unflinching insight into the strength her parents display. Nicola and Tom Fuller are courageous and resilient people who manage to instill self-sufficiency and resourcefulness in Alexandra and her older sister, Vanessa. Alexandra has crafted a superb story that will capture the reader's imagination and engage their sympathy and admiration.

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