Book Review

I know that Sim and Janelle leave the country this week, and there are starving children in China and Congolese refugees camped at the end of my drive way , but I have read another great book:


Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, by Alexandra Fuller

It is the story of the author's childhood, as the daughter of English settlers in Rhodesia. She is about 8 years older than I, in a totally different world, and yet in exactly the same one. Her parents were in the farmer class of settlers, broke English blokes with nothing to lose and a thirst for adventure (and beer).

The story itself caught all my attention for the week that I was working through it, because her accounts of Africa are so well articulated--both in what she actually says and in what she leaves out. Like when she tells of the customs official who casually picks his nose and he flips through her passport. She catches the real vibe of the expatriate experience in Africa, and then puts it into words that increased my consciousness of that vibe.

I wouldn't classify it as a comedy, which leaves one other option. I would warn Louise, if she reads it, that on pg 73, a teenage girl gets raped. The whole thing takes less than a paragraph, and is described nonchalantly and matter of factly, just like a few pages later when a baby sister dies. But it caught me off guard, so there's a heads up.