My other book group is discussing this book tonight, "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight" by Alexandra Fuller. Now that school and after-school activities are in full swing I knew that I would have a better chance of reading it if I listened to it on tape. I loved reading (listening) it. It is a memoir about a girl born in England but raised in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Malawi. The thing that was most interesting/amazing to me was the fact although we weren't born that far apart (in years) our lives couldn't have been more different.
This is a quote from an interview with Powell's.
"In her 2001 debut, Alexandra Fuller recalled in vivid, often excruciating detail coming of age in Rhodesia as a long civil war raged in neighboring Mozambique and her own country slid down the violent path toward an independent, African Nationalist regime.
Dogs astounded readers with its candor, describing from a young girl's point of view a wild landscape of far-reaching beauty and a continent in the throes of a vicious political antagonism she could not yet comprehend. Narrating from within her own family's constant struggle for survival, Fuller brilliantly assimilated the dangers of war (land mines planted on the road to the local store, guerillas camping in the nearby hills) into the relentless domestic tumult around her, so that readers could hardly distinguish between the two. The Boston Globe, echoing the opinion of critics and readers around the world, marveled, "The extremely personal and unguarded understatement of this memoir is far more powerful than any sociopolitical analysis or apologist interpretation could hope to be."
And to think at the same time/age I was worried about whether my mom would be late picking me up from piano lessons or if I would be able to find a seat on the bus for both me and my french horn. The language is a little "earthy"(?) perhaps more so because I was listening to it. The book was extremely engaging and exposed me to a time and place that I have very little knowledge of. Unfortunately I can't go to the book group discussion :(Read any good memoirs lately?
