Customer Reviews

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight

5 star:		(146)
4 star:		(55)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(20)

 

 

After reading Entertainment Weekly's review of this book, my curiousity led me to purchase it for my wife, since she enjoys reading true tales of other women. However, I started reading it before she did and I quickly was drawn into Alexandra Fuller's world.

Her style is a little disconcerting at first (simply because she is speaking in her own voice and the language and slang she grew up with), and it takes a while to fall into the flow of her jumping around in her life in the early chapters, but I almost immediately was drawn into her world.

I really enjoy writers who have a style all their own and Fuller definitely has her own unique voice. Her language is sometimes choppy, but it stills conveys meaning and understanding.

What I partuclarly liked was the subtle way she conveyed the changing of the guard in Africa, as black rule began to become the rule, rather than the exception. Without directly commenting on the changes either positively or negatively, she conveys the confusion that the change brought about and suggests that whether blacks or whites are in control, the common people of most African nations remain oppressed by their leaders.I think Ms. Fuller makes it clear that regardless of their race, whites and blacks are Africans and that something must eventually be done about the oppresive political environment present in so many African nations. This book is particulary relevant given the recent turmoil over the apparent re-election of Robert Mugabe.

I was fascinated by her mother, but wished she had provided more information about her sister. At one point she hints that her sister may have been molested by a neighbor and that a neighbor may have attempted to do the same to her, but she is vague on details, perhaps deliberately so.

I also was a little disappointed that there was not more detail on her and her sister's lives in their late teens and early adulthood, but she still manages to convey a tremendous amount of information about their lives as young adults in a relatively short span.

Overall this is a fascinating look at a way of life that is rapidly dying out and I would be curious to see if her parents are eventually forced to leave Africa. I guess its a mark of a good author that when they finish their tale, you're asking for more.

Dissatisfied reviewers of Alexandra Fuller's "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight" tend to dwell on the degree to which the book fails to conform to their own agendas and expectations. These reviewers lament Fuller's perceived lack of attention to women's issues, the plight of black Zimbabweans, and the horrors of the Rhodesian War, to name a few. In other words, rather than praise Fuller for the story she tells, they criticize her for stories they believe she fails to tell. To bad for them; they are missing out on a great book.

In addition to being smart, funny, entertainnig, and well-written, Fuller's memoir provides invaluable insight into the end of white rule in southern Africa. The Fullers are hardly members of a wealthly, landed, colonial ruling class. They are poor, rootless, prone to drinking and fighting. Where is the privilege, however minimal, for which they and other white Rhodesians fought? Why on earth would they stay on in places like Zambia and Malawi after the end of white rule? Fuller offers no definite answers to these questions -- though possible answers lurk in the loving and intricate passages in which Fuller describes the sights, sounds, and smells of southern African life. As the story of ordinary white Africans living through a defining moment in southern African history, this book works particularly well.

Those who enjoy Fuller's book might also want to read "Mukiwa," Peter Godwin's equally excellent memoir of growing up in white Rhodesia. Godwin (who, like Fuller, spent much of his youth in the eastern part of Rhodesia, near the border with Mozambique) is about ten years older than Fuller. As such, he offers more about the origins of the war. Godwin also fought with the Rhodesian Army in the 1970s (these experiences make up a large portion of his narrative) and returned to his homeland as a journalist in the 1980s, to cover prime minister Robert Mugabe's reign of terror against his opposition. This more political and historical approach provides a nice companion to Fuller's work.

What a pleasure it is to start off the new year with a wonderful new book. I probably never would have picked this book up, except for the glowing reviews it's been getting. And, are they ever deserved. This is the story of Bobo Fuller, daughter of gone-to-the-dogs parents in 1970's Rhodesia, on the losing (depending on your point of view) side of a civil war. Covering her growing-up years of moving from one place to another in Africa always searching for a way to exist in a place where white Africans no longer had power and privilege, Ms. Fuller writes unsparingly, unsentimentally, and honestly about her family and their remarkable experiences. Don't miss this terrific book.

If there's one thing Alexandra Fuller can do, it's write. This unsentimental memoir of a white African childhood on various hardscrabble farms from 1972 to 1990, amidst periods of "unrest," including Rhodesia's long struggle against white rule, captivates as it horrifies. With humor and unflinching honesty, Fuller immerses the reader in the welter of smells, searing heat, torrential rains and myriad dangers from man, animal and plantlife.

Her opening:
"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're sleeping.'
'Why not?'
'We might shoot you.'
'Oh.'
'By mistake.'
'Okay.' As it is, there seems a good enough chance of getting shot on purpose. 'Okay, I won't.' "

With these few lines, Fuller captures her tone - fluctuations of fear, bewilderment and humor. Her story is told primarily in present tense from her childhood point of view, though she skips around in chronology in order to follow theme threads: school, war, poverty, her mother's alcoholism and unpredictability. Her mother, Nicola, is ferocious, larger than life; a woman who can drag her daughter off without breakfast to spend the day on horseback rounding up wild cows or laze away a rainy day sprawled with both daughters on her bed reading. A woman whose manic-depressive tendencies were exacerbated by the heartbreaking deaths of three of her five children and exaggerated by alcohol. She's brave, unpredictable, loving and scary.

Racism in Fuller's world is a given, unquestioned by the child who sasses her nanny by threatening to fire her. Her parents are so poor they sell Nicola's rings each planting season and redeem them at harvest. Yet they have a houseful of servants and field hands. One day, her mother out, Fuller is bitten by something on her "downthere." Despite her terrified wailing, her black nanny refuses to aid her. When Nicola finally arrives, she drags the child inside, exasperated, and warns her, " 'Never, ever pull down your shorts in front of an African again."

Fuller concludes the incident: "That's how I remember Karoi. And the dust-stinging wind blowing through the mealies on a hot, dry September night....And the beginning of the army guys: men in camouflage, breaking like a ribbon out of the back of an army lorry and uncurling onto the road, heads shaved, faces fresh and blank. Men cradling guns. And the beginning of men not in camouflage anymore, looking blank-faced, limbs lost."

There's a dark, manic hilarity to much of the book - the teenage Fuller crossing the border on her way to boarding school, her mother comatose from an all-night drunk. "Dad nods, smokes. I crush out my cigarette. We're both hoping Mum doesn't say anything to get us shot." There are also gut-wrenching tragedies and moments of abject terror. The death of a sibling, her parents' grief-addled drunken driving, war. And there is Africa, a place of extremes, a place full of noises, smells and weather to make the rest of the world tame and drab in comparison, a place Fuller captures lovingly in her vivid, muscular, poetic prose.

One reviewer here gave this book one star because he thought the protagonist and her family racist. He is mostly right. None of that need detract from the fact that this is a superb book with a transparency and sense of place rarely seen.

you may not always agree with what you read in it but that does not make it any less worth reading. Speaking as a mixed race man who has lived in many places in Africa, I found this to be honest and well-observed. The fact that the author does not attempt to re-write her family history to appear politically correct speaks for her honesty.

Go read this magnificent book.

Evokes images of childhood and Africa that are at the same time luscious and abhorrent, but that draw you into the life of this young girl like few other early childhood biographies have achieved. Miss Fuller is completely unapologetic about her parents and accepts them for who they are are and doesn't try to excuse or blame them -- how refreshing!

This is hardly an objective review, as I like Ms. Fuller grew up in the white farming community of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and I'm also a survivor of the pink prison (Arundel School) and now reside in the US. But unlike Bobo, I grew up a wealthy farm with relatively normal parents in a very abnormal world of the white colonialist in black Africa. I resonate strongly with her images which are dead on. I still wake each morning listening to hear the "work harder" doves and the "go away" birds. Thanks Bobo for giving me a couple hours to relapse into a world that no longer exists but was home for some of us. Looks like those "Use of English" classes taught by Mrs. Twiss at Arundel paid off....

A well delivered account of a British family that settles in colonized Rhodesia. The author's account of her family's experience is well written, humorous at time and painful at others. My initial resistance to the memoir was based on early impressions that this is yet another depiction of European oppression of native Africans during colonization. However, as the book progresses life in war torn Rhodesia (and other countries) as revealed from the perspective of farming class colonizers proves to be more interesting than expected. Fuller aptly captures the atmosphere of the African countryside - its sounds, smells and beauty. It's always difficult to read of the disdain, disrespect and assumed superiority of one race over another but the author's life account demonstrates that a shift in racist notions is possible. The book came to me by way of a friend who thought the book would be too "deep". I didn't find that to be the case. I doubt that I would have picked this up on my own but I'm glad to have been exposed to the author's coming of age in the Motherland.

Subtitled, "An African Childhood," this delightful autobiography by Alexandra Fuller transported me right into her world. Born in 1969, her early childhood was spent in sweltering hot Rhodesia, where her parents slept with guns next to their bed, and her father was often away, fighting with other white men against the guerillas who eventually won the war. Her parents were poor, life was brutal and harsh, and the climate was always sticky and uncomfortable. And yet, this is a tale laced with humor as she casts her child's eye view at the many disruptions and disappointments of her family's life as they moved from Rhodesia to Malawi and then to Zambia.

Ms. Fuller's world was full of hot sweaty days, hard work, mosquitoes and ticks and snakes. There's only occasional electricity, drinking water is foul, and any kind of plumbing is a luxury. But there's always beer and alcohol, and lots of cigarettes, all of which is taken for granted as a way of life by her and her sister, the two surviving siblings out of five. I couldn't help thinking about my own children and their easy life here in New York, as I looked at the photographs throughout the book as the two young girls grew up and the parents grew wrinkled and gray. I love the writer's descriptions and the way she uses words. The children sing songs about fighting through "thickandthin" and the family camps with other "expats-like-us". Young Alexandra, nicknamed "Bobo" learns to clean, load and shoot a gun. Her father chain smokes cigarettes as he drives their Land Rover over inhospitable roads. Her mother loves animals and keeps packs of dogs around in a losing battle to control their fleas. The children attend boarding schools that change in racial composition as the politics change. And yet there's never a single word of self pity in spite of failing crops and ramshackle living conditions.

I loved this book and read it fast, enjoying Ms. Fuller's voice. The Africa she describes became real to me as I let myself plunge into her world for a little while. There was an excellent map which helped me locate the places she describes as well as the family snapshots. Most of all though, there was a sense throughout of what it really felt like to be that little girl who grew up to share her memories with her readers. I thank her for doing that and give this book one of my highest recommendations. Read it. It's a real treat!

"I am African by accident, not by birth," Alexendra Fuller writes in this childhood memoir; "so while soul, heart, and the bent of my mind are African, my skin blaringly begs to differ and is resolutely white" (p. 305). Fuller was born in Derbyshire, England in 1969, and moved to Rhodesia with her parents and older sister in 1972, while she was still learning "toddler English" (p. 10). She then moved to Wyoming in 1994, where she now lives with her river-guide husband, Charlie, and their two children. Fuller's memoir is as much the story of how she came to terms with her family's troubled history, as her love story for Africa (p. 308).

As a memoir, Fuller writes of a childhood that was passionate, troubled, wonderful, oppressive, chaotic, and beautiful. Her complicated mother, Nicola, gave birth to five children; only two survived. Fuller describes her mother as intelligent, but a racist, glamorous, but a hard drinker, and just as capable of discussing Shakespeare as killing a spitting cobra with a gun. She describes her father, Tim, as a heavy-drinking racist, yet taciturn and capable, and as a man who loved Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. Fuller's beautiful sister, Vanessa, is best described as the very cool, older sibling we all wish we had to accompany us through childhood. As for her three siblings that didn't survive, well Fuller is quick to note that it doesn't take an African to explain why you don't leave a child in an unmarked grave. "The child will come back to haunt you and wrap itself around you until your own breathing stops under the damp weight of its tiny, ghostly persistence" (p. 211). Hers was no ordinary childhood. And Africa was no ordinary playground.

Fuller writes as if she has African dust in her blood. Her memoir follows her family's moves from Rhodesia to Zambia to Malawi and back to Zambia. Despite the country's hostile, desolate environment, Fuller's love for Africa is always evident, from its snakes, scorpions, biting ticks and leopards, to its "hot, sweet, smoky, salty" smells--"It is like black tea, cut tobacco, fresh fire, old sweat, young grass," she writes (p. 130)--to its sounds--"The grasshoppers and crickets sing and whine. Drying grass crackles. Dogs pant" (p. 131).

A friend encouraged me to read this book, but it was really the book's quirky title and cover photo that nudged me into traveling with Fuller back to the Africa she discovered as a child. What I experienced on that journey was unforgettable. I highly recommend this book.

G. Merritt

I loved this book. Alexandra Fuller's writing style is refreshing and unique. Her vivid and sometimes horrifying experiences were totally engrossing. It has been several years since I have become so absorbed in a book that I was bereft when it ended and desperate to find another book to fill the void. I even immediately reread sections rather than let it go. The racism of her parents is not disguised nor apologized for. It is stated as a matter of history, and despite my shock at their attitudes, I appreciated the honesty with which it was recounted. When Alexandra swore never to leave Africa after nearly dying from drinking tea water tainted with Hippo dung, I was incredulous that anyone could wish to live in such harsh conditions. I'm sure it would be fascinating to hear her sister's side of the story, since Alexandra paints their relationship as cruely one-sided.

Believe every good review about this book and treat yourself to a wonderful experience by reading it today.