Uploaded May 2018 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Sub-titled "An African Childhood," Alexandra Fuller's memorable account of growing up in the political hotbed of the seventies is as much romance as requiem.
Impeccably written, with a wry sense of humour and a natural gift for dialogue, her singular account of a peripatetic youth across a broad swathe of farmlands, from Kenya to Zambia and what was then Rhodesia, became a surprise best-seller, ushering in no less than three successors: "Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness", featuring her indomitable, colourful, and much beloved parents; "Scribbling the Cat," in which she befriends an equally indomitable soldier, identified only as "K"; and "Leaving Before the Rains Come," in which, as a child of the Rhodesian Wars, bearing personal wounds of her own, she comes to terms with leaving Africa with the man she married, and living in the vast expanses of Wyoming.
"Don't Let's Go to the Dogs..." is clearly the one to start with, but all four are free-standing; and there's nary a page in any of them - even when chosen at random - that is not consistently riveting.
More biographies reviewed at:
bookreviewsandvideos.com/category/biography-book-reviews
Sub-titled "An African Childhood," Alexandra Fuller's memorable account of growing up in the political hotbed of the seventies is as much romance as requiem.
Impeccably written, with a wry sense of humour and a natural gift for dialogue, her singular account of a peripatetic youth across a broad swathe of farmlands, from Kenya to Zambia and what was then Rhodesia, became a surprise best-seller, ushering in no less than three successors: "Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness", featuring her indomitable, colourful, and much beloved parents; "Scribbling the Cat," in which she befriends an equally indomitable soldier, identified only as "K"; and "Leaving Before the Rains Come," in which, as a child of the Rhodesian Wars, bearing personal wounds of her own, she comes to terms with leaving Africa with the man she married, and living in the vast expanses of Wyoming.
"Don't Let's Go to the Dogs..." is clearly the one to start with, but all four are free-standing; and there's nary a page in any of them - even when chosen at random - that is not consistently riveting.
More biographies reviewed at:
bookreviewsandvideos.com/category/biography-book-reviews
