A-recollection-but-not-really-a-revealing-one

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 176 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The Roads of Rhodesia

This family is composed mainly of fighters, people who decided to forsake the clotted cream comfort of their native England for the thorny bush country of, what was then known as, Rhodesia.

In poetic prose that the reader occasionally stumbles over, Fuller takes us on a dense tour of her life in Africa, thesaurus in hand, and describes the stunning beauty and hopeless squalor of the land with a series of adjectives and adverbs that occasionally seem shoehorned in but rarely off-the-mark. This makes for an occasionally jarring, though still beautiful, journey, much like what the young author must have experienced perched on the spare tire of her family's bucking Land Rover. Some of Fuller's descriptive metaphors, however, are quite luminous; they stay with you.

Still, she hits home with her prose more often than not, and produces a thoroughly readable if somewhat detached report on the life of her family, and how they bear up as trauma eclipses joy after a series of dismal events, including the deaths of small children and runs for the border of several African nations as things (i.e., the political landscape, war) shift and change. These things would loom large in anyone's life, and they are told here with an air of inevitability and acceptance . . . even excitement.

Here's a family who thrives on adventure.

There were several times Fuller had me right there in the back of the Land Rover with her. I was unsettled and awed by what we saw together. She's an amazing writer when she gets going.

Great read.

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A-recollection-but-not-really-a-revealing-one

Fuller writes an honest (the book's greatest strength) but skeletal (the book's greatest weakness) account of her childhood in south/eastern Africa. Fuller's parents were of, perhaps, the last generation of white expatriates who hoped to govern in Africa. Her mother's wish: that one country in Africa remain white-run.

Although Fuller, by race, is of this European superclass, her family is not wealthy. So they struggle and they relocate. Her upbringing emboldens her to think her white self superior to the black native muntu.(She admits to this "Anglocentricity" in the best written part of the book, the afterword: "My Africa".)

{{And now a personal recollection. Fuller and I were in Malawi at the same time: she, a member of that expatriate white community trying to forge a life in Africa; me, a member--"two-year wonders", Fuller calls them--of the aid community trying to help in Africa. The groups did not mix well. When I asked the white manager of a tea estate how long it would take before Malawians would be able manage the farm, he said: "These boogers are only one bound out of the jungle". Racist, yes; truthful,. . .? He, though, was willing to stay and work and live in Malawi evermore. I taught my three years at a secondary school, bolted, and kissed ground when I landed back in the U.S. Who deserves criticism? Who helps more?}}

The most moving part of the book: when Fuller visits the hut of a native family and then returns--as a gesture of thanks for their hospitality to her--to offer second-hand clothes to them. That recollection reveals the humanity of the family she visits and the humility and compassion Fuller started to feel as she matured.

That is the type of writing--unfortunately only found in this passage and in her afterword--which would have made this book great.

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A surprisingly great read!

I found this in audio at an audio rental store. The front intrigued me so I read the back and decided to give it a go. I liked it so much that my husband decided he wanted to listen to it too! What an interesting life to have lead at such a young age!

Highly recommended

This is not a book is fascinating, though not the best pick for those with a weak stomach. It's painfully honest and that's why I loved it. The author has a really rich yet simple way of writing, so you feel, smell, see, taste the entire experience they had growing up in Africa. It's far from a comfortable way of life, and it's downright depressing in some parts, but that's part of its honesty and richness. I really respect someone who is able to write about their own life without glamorizing it nor condemning it.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

In Don?t Let?s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller remembers her African childhood with candor and sensitivity. Though it is a diary of an unruly life in an often inhospitable place, it is suffused with Fuller?s endearing ability to find laughter, even when there is little to celebrate. Fuller?s debut is unsentimental and unflinching but always captivating. In wry and sometimes hilarious prose, she stares down disaster and looks back with rage and love at the life of an extraordinary family in an extraordinary time.

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