This sequel to Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is a tribute to Alexandra Fuller’s parents, a remarkable couple who against all the odds built a life for themselves in southern Africa. Her mother just calls them Awful Book # 1 and Awful Book # 2. 🙂 Obviously Fuller gets her unstoppable sense of humour from her parents.
This one covers a lot of the same ground as Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, but adds more backstory, history of the family, and political history of the region. Again on display is Fuller’s trademark sense of humour and her brisk captivating storytelling. The little girl on the cover photo is Nicola Fuller, Alexandra’s mother, who grew up in Kenya.
There’s no doubt Fuller’s parents lived life on their own terms. Fuller says herself that her mother had a ‘crazy courage’ that enabled her to see adventure and possibility where others saw only disaster and tragedy. And there was plenty of that.
In many ways Fuller’s childhood was dysfunctional and dangerous because of her parents’ choices. And yet she acknowledges how much they mean to her. “To my matchless and wonderful parents–Nicola and Tim Fuller of Central Africa–for their resilience, their humour, their compassion, their example and their generosity.”
There are more of Fuller’s books I would like to read. One is called Leaving Before the Rains Come about her divorce from a decades long marriage, and the other is Travel Light, Move Fast about the grief of losing her father and a 21 year old son.
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