Prolifically Raw: Book Talk: Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Book Talk: Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller

In this book, a loaded gun appears in the second sentence of the opening page. Mom is passed out on page 13.

To me, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller is a big story, seemingly as big as the continent on which it is set—Africa.

Fuller’s life in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) was a dangerous combination of poisonous spiders, snakes, terrorists and drunken parents who were farmers, colonists and soldiers in the newly formed white-only government.

My question, in reading this book (and considering my own memoir), is this: how do we share our stories that are simply too large? Even for writers who grew up in one house, in a small town, without African wildlife and war, the story can overwhelm. The setting and the people can take over. The tragedies can be more than the reader can bear.

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight bulges with history, geography, the author’s larger than life parents and sister. Fuller’s accounting of the war could be it’s own book and yet, in the writing, she takes command of her story. Even in the years when Bobo (Fuller’s nickname) is a very young girl, she is the story. With big open eyes, she describes this enormous world of hers and we stay riveted with the young girl as narrator. She is the smallest in the family, smaller than the ghosts of previous siblings who had died.

This exchange with her father, after she had a night of little sleep, and much to fear, displays seven-year-old narration in a pitch perfect tone.

“Morning Dad.”
“Sleep alright?”
“Like a log,” I tell him. “You?”

Bobo is stoic. She is in a dance with her father. She does not whine about her fear of the terrorists under the bed. She is a third generation white African farmer after all.

When her family moves, “right into the middle, the very birthplace and epicenter, of the civil war in Rhodesia and a freshly stoked civil war in Mozambique,” her life goes on as any young girl who attends school and wears fresh clothes on her trips to town. When she has to say goodbye to her father, she shares,

There’s a lump in my throat that hurts when I swallow and I can’t talk or I’ll start to cry. Mum puts down her hand. I slip my hand into hers and we begin to walk back to the house. It feels strange to hold Mum’s hand and too quickly there is an uncomfortable film of sweat between us.

Her father leaves to fight in a tangled and bloody war and she, like many of us who must say goodbye to Dad, won’t allow comfort from her mother. She is a tough girl, tough like those of us who’ve never even seen a poisonous snake or an Uzi gun.

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight reminds me that the only way through a big story is straight through. A writer must keep her senses on alert and her ears open to the narrator in her heads. A writer must also trust the reader will come along on the journey when we simply describe our story with wide eyes. A big story is harder to tame perhaps, I have learned that a writer must learn to keep command of her story. ~ By Clover Cohen

I'm happy to present Clover Cohen, a long time student in the Master Class. Cloie is one to watch! Enjoy her insights on memoir. She's a hard working writer who is paying her dues.