Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight. It doesn't make much sense, does it?
The book itself makes much more, though it is a bundle of paradoxes. Alexandra Fuller -- affectionately known as "Bobo" -- grew up in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Malawi and Zambia in 1970's and '80's Africa. Her story is powerful, unsentimental, vivid. She manages to capture Africa: the smells of "black tea, cut tobacco, fresh fire, old sweat, young grass." We see the powerful rhythms of this continent - the burning sun in the afternoon, the absolute stillness in the middle of night, the slow wait for seasonal rains. If you want to know Africa and cannot travel there, this may be the next best thing.
There is both a joy and sadness that runs throughout the book. Fuller's mother is a manic depressive, her father alcoholic, three of her siblings die. She lives during the civil war in Rhodesia, as a young white girl, going to an all-white school. Yet, she deals sparingly with these explosive topics: war, violence, abject poverty. We never see the front lines of the war, only the side effects. Similarly, not until two-thirds of the way through the book do we see the inside of an African hut - not a European bungalow, but a hut with dirt floors and thatch walls and a pot burning over a fire. These spare details capture Africa even more successfully: we are not forced to watch violence and poverty page after page, but realize time after time that it is there. Almost like most of us now: realizing the violence and poverty around us, never faced with it directly. But on the few times we do see it directly, it is all that more powerful.
The sadness of the family, and the continent itself, is surpassed by love. The love she has for her mother and father and surviving sister, the love she has for the land and smells and sights. Through the trials there is an indefatigable current of love running through.
And this is the strength of the memoir. It paints life in Africa as it often is in America: a mixture of love and sadness, a frailty and strength, periods of violence and peace. May we all have the joy and sadness of living such a life to the fullest extent that it can be lived.
