Bringing to life the beauty and violence of a childhood in a time of change

books:


	• 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 180 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Powerful

This book left me feeling much the same as I felt after reading Angela's Ashes.

To say that it is a wonderful, powerful and sometimes very funny account of growing up in Rhodesia, which it is, does not address how terribly sad and deprived this woman's childhood was.

Ms. Fullers childhood was full of dirt and disorder, alcohol, death and racial tension. That she was able to grow up to write about it so beautifully and not to have lost the humor it provided is nothing short of amazing.

Just as in Angela's ashes, you will not like the parents. Put that aside and enjoy the book.

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Africa through a girl's eyes

I liked this book. Not that it is brilliantly written, but the text reflects the fact that this story is being told in a simple way by a young girl living in an inhospitable land in constant stages of unrest. Alexandra Fuller conveys her unruly white rural African childhood with candor and sensitivity in an unsentimental way. As you read the book you see her life through a child's eyes and the details and things that are important at each stage of her life, albeit in an environment very different from the normal american child.

As the story goes (1972-1990), "Bobo" grew up on several farms in southern and central Africa. Both parents are unique, tortured and strongly independent. I actually admired the strength and conviction of these British expatriates, even though I believe they were very human and made the mistakes that all parents do.

This book is more than a biography or a survivor's story. It is the portrait of a young girl/woman with a strong unbreakable bond with a continent she calls "home" and it's people. I can definitely relate to that bond with an environment you are spiritually linked too and yearn for. It's a feeling you can't really describe to others nor want to justify, but just keep in your heart to treasure.

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Great Southern African Experience

This book gives a very real idea of what life is like in southern Africa and why it steals the hearts of those who grow up there.

Vivid, engaging, challenging

An incredible story. Actually a chronological series of vignettes, the way it's constructed. Vivid descriptions captured in a narrative flow imbued with the sights, smells, and sounds of Africa. Perhaps the most striking thing is how there is so much familiar in lives so different from most. The girls still went to school, the family had their Christmas traditions, and their toilets weren't much more reliable than ours. Am so glad I found this book.

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Bringing to life the beauty and violence of a childhood in a time of change

If you have been to Africa, Alexandra Fuller's words will bring back to life all that your senses have experienced - the still, thick nights and choirs of morning movement, the enveloping smells, the stunning beauty and feel of the earth. And they will bring back the reality of poverty and inequality. If you have not been so blessed to have been to Africa, Fuller will light your imagination with her words. She will, perhaps more importantly, give you a glimpse into the life of an Anglo family in the midst of the southern countries' fight for independence and land reform.

Fuller speaks openly of the racism held tightly by the European farmers, farmers who for generations worked the land of today's Zambia, Malawi and Zimbabwe. This racism runs strong in her own parents, and she portrays them with honesty and with love. She gives an insight into a life I have long held my own bias against.

Fuller transports the reader on to the farm and into the bush, from her early childhood until marriage. She speaks as a child would recall leaping into bed after a trip to the bathroom in the dark of night, lest there be monsters under her bed. But her monsters were in the form of "terrorists". She reflects as an adult, aware of the kinks in her own upbringing, the stark horrors of the times, and the beauty of the place. She does this with wit, clarity, absence of sentimentality, and with love.

I began reading this book for a second time - the day I finished the first.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, page 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18

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