Non-Fiction Book Club to discuss "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight" by Alexandra Fuller - Thursday, May 5 - 6:30PM
From the book jacket:
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.
From 1972 to 1990, Alexandra Fuller—known to friends and family as Bobo—grew up on several farms in southern and central Africa. Her father joined up on the side of the white government in the Rhodesian civil war, and was often away fighting against the powerful black guerrilla nations. Her mother, in turn, flung herself into their African life and its rugged farm work with the same passion and maniacal energy she brought to everything else. Though she loved her children, she was no hand-holder and had little tolerance for neediness. She nurtured her daughters in other ways: She taught them, by example, to be resilient and self-sufficient, to have strong wills and strong opinions, and to embrace life whole-heartedly, despite and because of difficult circumstances. And she instilled in Bobo, particularly, a love of reading and of storytelling that proved to be her salvation.
A worthy heir to Isak Dinesen and Beryl Markham, Alexandra Fuller writes poignantly about a girl becoming a woman and a writer against a backdrop of unrest, not just in her country but in her home. But Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight is more than a survivor’s story. It is the story of one woman’s unbreakable bond with a continent and the people who inhabit it, a portrait lovingly realized and deeply felt.
About the author:
Alexandra Fuller has written five books of non-fiction including her award winning first book, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood (Random House, 2001). The Legend of Colton H Bryant told the story of a modern-day Wyoming cowboy working on that state’s oil rigs The New York Times Best Selling, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness (August, 2011), is a prequel/sequel to Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight. Her latest book, a memoir of marriage and divorce, is entitled Leaving Before the Rains Come (January, 2015). Fuller has written for The New Yorker, Vogue, and is a frequent contributor to National Geographic Magazine.
Pollard Library Non-Fiction book club happens at 6:30 on the first Thursday of every month. It is free and open to the public. Copies of books up for discussion are available for patrons to borrow on a first come first serve basis at the 1st Floor Information Desk. You may also reserve a copy by calling the Community Planning Department at 978-674-1542. For more information about this group please contact Sean Thibodeau, Coordinator of Community Planning, at sthibodeau@mvlc.org or 978-674-1542.