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. They have free reign among scorpions, snakes, leopards, and baboons and they live in the middle of the Rhodesian war. this work captures the tone of a very young person caught up in her own small world as she witnesses a far larger historical event. Her feel for dialogue (naturally reconstructed, but incredibly realistic) is outstanding and her rendering of a child's understanding of language is superb.

It is a tale of strength in both body and spirit about a family constantly fighting the odds, yet somehow never quite giving up. This is the second book I've read by fuller and I just love her writing style and the story she has to tell. The family handle their mother's alcoholism and insanity with the same stoicism they handle any other misfortune, though they do occasionally compare themselves to families with normal mothers, clean swimming pools, home baking and children free of worms.

Unsentimental and unflinching, but always enchanting, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight is the story of an extraordinary family in an extraordinary time. Given the surface-level dissonance of a white family claiming an African identity, Fuller works hard to demonstrate how their roots, their loyalty, even their identities are all inexorably bound to the earth. This means the precise sequence of events is not always clear, but overall, it is an endearing insight into some troubled lives and times. When I left Africa, I left the book behind for someone else to read (reading material is in short supply for PCV's) and didn't mind a lick that I hadn't finished it. Where it's normal to live carrying guns and needing escorts just to go to the local village, in case you drive over landmines or get assaulted.

It is perhaps closer to misery lit, although the tone is mostly light, and the worst episodes glossed over. The adult Fuller includes enough details (her habitual childhood imperiousness to darker-skinned adults, those adults' dismay, then anger at her impossible harping) for us to understand exactly what is at stake, and also to let us understand the ironies. The mosquito coils, the baobab trees, the explosion of day birds, the greasy fish stews over rice, the smells of black tea, cut tobacco, fresh fire, old sweat, young grass. As a small child, she resists punishment by saying "Then I'll fire you", which is awful, but reflects a degree of truth, and similarly, her disgust at using a cup that might have been used by an African is a learned reaction. a vibrantly personal account of growing up in a family every bit as exotic as the continent which seduced it .Here it is so hot that “the flamboyant tree outside cracks to itself, as if already anticipating how it will feel to be on fire”. Here the land is “softly voluptuously fertile and sweet smelling of khaki weed, and old cow manure and thin dust and msasa leaves”. Usually when I choose to re-read a book I feel like I'm wasting time that could be devoted to reading a new book.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A worthy heir to Isak Dinesen and Beryl Markham, Alexandra Fuller shares visceral memories of her childhood in Africa, and of her headstrong, unforgettable mother. It is so hot outside that the flamboyant tree outside cracks to itself, as if already anticipating how it will feel to be on fire. Life can be so horrible that it is no wonder that many dream of heaven, but Alexandra still dreams of Africa. Then at Independence (1980), Bobo and her classmates are stunned to see black pupils far wealthier and more sophisticated than them joining their elite high school.

These are difficult things to say – get the tone wrong and you will offend almost everyone – but Fuller’s gaze is equally astonishing when she directs it at the bodies of the white people around her. It is clean, resilient, almost gleaming with love of home, love of family, and a certain, perhaps distinctly African, humorous resignation. And then when the author gets married, on the way to the ceremony, sitting in the car with her father who is now driving and has just handed her a gin and tonic to combat both nerves and a persistent case of malaria, her father says, "You're not bad looking once they scrape the mud off you and put you in a dress. Don’t exaggerate,” her mother says when she sees dead men on the road, “you saw body bags, not bodies.

However, as I read it, Fuller is merely describing how things really were: casual, and sometimes benevolent racism were the norm.This story is told entirely in the voice of whatever age Bobo is at the time - mainly a child - and as a child, she has no other life experience to compare with her own.