The Friday Overlooked Book Club

When Derringer Award nominee Patti Abbott came up with the idea for a Friday blog feature about overlooked books, the gems that go un-noticed and deserve a wider readership, I came up with several titles. I settled on this outstanding memoir as my choice to kick off this Friday blog feature.

Years ago my book club read DON’T LET’S GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT by Alexandra Fuller. Everyone in the club loved it – quite rare since my book club was a notoriously “tough room.” (And guess who was in charge of the club? Are you surprised they called me “the book Nazi?”).

I’ve read a lot of memoirs in my day and they usually involve someone surviving the-family-from-hell but when the backdrop is war-torn Africa, and the prose, the writing is this strong not only do I remember the book many years later but am happy to recommend it to everyone I know.

Here’s some info I got off the Internet:

Alexandra Fuller, known universally as Bobo, grew up on a succession of ever-poorer tobacco and cattle farms in Rhodesia, Malawi and Zambia in the 1970s and 80s, with alcoholic parents, a manic-depressive mother, civil war going on all around, and three out of her four beloved siblings dying in infancy. She noticed quite early on that she was the wrong colour for Africa: a "marshmallow".

She published a childhood memoir that has been compared to the DIARY OF ANNE FRANK; to the works of Michael Ondaatje and Arundhati Roy. Richard E Grant has described it as "hilarious and insane".

Here is Fuller's mother's conversational repertoire with a new guest, as reported in the book: (1) the war; (2) dead children; (3) insanity; and (4) being Nicola Fuller of central Africa. Here is the guest's repertoire of reaction: (1) delight; (2) mild intoxication coupled with growing disbelief; (3) extreme intoxication coupled with growing panic; and (4) loss of consciousness. Young Bobo falls asleep to the sound of her mother saying, "We were prepared to die, you see, to keep one country white-run," and wakes to find her staring into the dawn with a warm beer still in her hands, and the guest passed out on the lawn. "We're all mad," says her mother some chapters later, "but only I have the certificate to prove it."

Fuller's sister, Olivia, drowning as a toddler; Fuller, a couple of years older, had been told, "Keep and eye on her," and has never quite escaped blaming herself.

Here’s an excerpt from the book:

When the ship veered into the Cape of Good Hope, Mum caught the spicy, heady scent of Africa on the changing wind. She smelled the people: raw onions and salt, the smell of people who are not afraid to eat meat, and who smoke fish over open fires on the beach and who pound maize into meal and who work out-of-doors. She held me up to face the earthy air, so that the fingers of warmth pushed back my black curls of hair, and her pale green eyes went clear-glassy.“Smell that,” she whispered, “that’s home.”Vanessa was running up and down the deck, unaccountably wild for a child usually so placid. Intoxicated already. I took in a faceful of African air and fell instantly into a fever.

Me too when I read this gut wrenching and brilliant memoir! And you know how hard I am to impress. So, anyone else read this book for their book club or on their own? Is this book as overlooked and under-appreciated as I think it is?

The Friday Overlooked Book Club is the brilliant idea of team leader Patti Abbott. To participate, be sure to link up at http://pattinase.blogspot.com/

I'm tagging that international man of mystery Ali Karim for next week!