Africa for English Girls

This is the kind of book I love, one that can take me to a far corner of the world and let me see, hear, and smell it for awhile.

Growing up on her family's remote farms in war-torn areas of Africa in the 70s, Alexandra Fuller learned to navigate the dangers of desert and jungle, family tragedies, and her mother's alcoholic neglect. It all worked together to produce a writer of uncommon talent and wisdom.

Her mother's antics and disasters play a large part in Fuller's book, so it was all the more interesting to find out that the she has just written a full account of Nicola Fuller's life in Africa, Cocktail Hour under the Tree of Forgetfulness. Can't wait to read that one next.

Check below for information on both books at the Library. Two great trips!



Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood
By Fuller, Alexandra
2011-07 - Center Point Large Print
9781611731125 Check the Library's Catalog

In "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller remembers her African childhood with candor and sensitivity. Though it is a diary of an unruly life in an often inhospitable place, it is suffused with Fuller's endearing ability to find laughter, even when there is little to celebrate. Fuller's debut is unsentimental and unflinching but always captivating. In wry and sometimes hilarious prose, she stares down disaster and looks back with rage and love at the life of an extraordinary family in an extraordinary time. …More

Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness
By Fuller, Alexandra
2011-08 - Penguin Press
9781594202995 Check the Library's Catalog

Fuller braids a multilayered narrative around the perfectly lit, Happy Valley-era Africa of her mother's childhood; the boiled cabbage grimness of her father's English childhood; and the darker, civil war-torn Africa of her own childhood. At its heart, this is the story of Fuller's mother, Nicola. …More