Rating: 
Summary: A Quick Trip Back in Time
Review: Evokes images of childhood and Africa that are at the same time luscious and abhorrent, but that draw you into the life of this young girl like few other early childhood biographies have achieved. Miss Fuller is completely unapologetic about her parents and accepts them for who they are are and doesn't try to excuse or blame them -- how refreshing!This is hardly an objective review, as I like Ms. Fuller grew up in the white farming community of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and I'm also a survivor of the pink prison (Arundel School) and now reside in the US. But unlike Bobo, I grew up a wealthy farm with relatively normal parents in a very abnormal world of the white colonialist in black Africa. I resonate strongly with her images which are dead on. I still wake each morning listening to hear the "work harder" doves and the "go away" birds. Thanks Bobo for giving me a couple hours to relapse into a world that no longer exists but was home for some of us. Looks like those "Use of English" classes taught by Mrs. Twiss at Arundel paid off....
Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding
Review: Alexandra Fuller has written an unsentimental, darkly funny memoir about growing up as a white settler in Africa during the midst of change.
Fuller describes civil war, poverty (her own family's, as well as the Africans who live near them), and the loss of her family's farm without self-pity or apology.
The lure, as well as the dangers, of the ex-patriot lifestyle are evident in each event. Fuller's descriptions of her mother's alcohoism, and battle with mental illness evoke empathy for the family.
Rating: 
Summary: not of the world
Review: Another version of white settler life in Zimbabwe could be George Clark's work. There is some nuance there and some substance. There's little here in "Don't Lets..." In fact, for the many native people who lost their land, their lives and their dignity and customs, this book is dangerously irrelevant. Again, for those who need and demand more from a book that portends to be about a complex topic that forever remains in the news, Fuller's book is not for you. There's no denying it is for a few others who may be reading for some light entertainment versus those of you hoping for a fuller understanding of the so-called modern world filled as it is with tremendous suffering and strife.
Rating:
Summary: an african heart
Review: what a 'gift' for anyone who grew up in africa ! east, west or south, in the 60's or 70's ! mirella riciardi would certainly appreciate this little masterpiece - from all of us who left a piece of our heart in africa, bravo to alexandra fuller !
Rating:
Summary: Surviving as a white minority
Review: Before living in Zimbabwe for 2 years (as a white volunteer), I had many opinions and misconceptions of the white "Rhodies". Yes, many of them are racist in an extreme way that I had not encountered before. The way many view the black Zimbabweans made my skin crawl and my stomach turn. However, I tried to understand their experience and realized that in order for them to survive and live as they had always done, whites had to view the black Zimbabweans as little more than animals--people that don't deserve control of their own country. That doesn't make the white Zimbabweans right, but when you read Alexandra Fuller's book, you get the idea that white families were just living, trying to survive in a beautiful yet harsh and unforgiving land. They were probably living and surviving in a very similar way as the first whites did in America as we were taking away land from the Native Americans and using slave labor to expand our holdings. Finally, this book is an amazing and unapologetic account of a process that has repeated itself many times throughout Africa. It's very complex, but at the same time very simple. I enjoyed reading the book, recognizing places and common things that happen there--even hearing the Rhodesian accents in my head (hey). I thoroughly recommend this book to anyone who has or wishes to travel throughout post-colonial Africa.
Rating:
Summary: An open book...
Review: ...Literarily, emotionally and psychologically. In terms of writing style Alexandra Fuller utilizes a visually descriptive, almost lyrical prose - "in the hot, slow time of day when time and sun and thought slow to a dragging, shallow, pale crawl..." She mixes this technique with creative, childlike-simple unique expressions such as when she describes two visiting church missionaries fending off her overly friendly dogs "in an offhand, I'm-not-really-pushing-your-dog-off-my-lap-I-love-dogs-really way." On the emotional level this book is raw with the author sparing no punches in depicting her parents off-the-scale less than politically correct views of their fellow (but black) Zimbabweans. Her father fought on the losing (and wrong) side of the Rhodesian civil war. He was a supporter of Ian Smith's white-minority government. Indeed there's really not much to like about Fuller's parents. But this is besides the point and discussing DON'T LETS GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT in terms of its social, political and economic setting also misses the point entirely. This is a memoir and as such it doesn't need a perspective or agenda nor does it have to pay attention to it's environment or worry about whatever cultural influences may be influencing the writer. All it needs to be, and to do, is to be well written and to be honest and open. This it does, and does well. There is plenty of opportunity to talk about politics and economics here. Afterall the time period (1972 -1990) and the places, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe after independence in 1980), Malawi and Zambia are frought with colonial and postcolonial concerns such as underdevelopment, equity, minority and majority rule, and revolutions. To complain that these issues are missing (and thankfully they are) is, again, missing the point. Yes, Fuller's book does remind one of old colonial English literature in terms of its approach to Africa and Africans. It's not the romantic image that Dinisen, Markham, and Huxley portrayed though. Some may see similarities with Waugh in the less than flattering portrayal of the people, and the visual imagery the word 'native' creates. But let's not stop there. What about those other defenders of the imperial imperative - Kipling, Conrad and Naipaul? If you wished to pursue this line of reasoning to see what all these writers' works say about culture, race, colonialism and imperialism there's no better book to read than Edward Said's CULTURE & IMPERIALISM. As the doyen of postcolonial studies he knows all about the literary depiction of these dark deeds in Waugh's satire, Kipling's poetry and Naipaul's novels. The truth is Fuller's book is nowhere near this league, nor is it trying to be. For the last time...it's a memoir! The words below are from another postcolonial thinker like Edward Said but offer the best context in which to view Fuller's and all other seemingly insensitive and contentious books. "A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return." (Salman Rushdie)
Rating:
Summary: Clear Seeing in an Unclear World
Review: From the wonderful cover to the last page, this book soars and roars with one hundred percent engagement with life. I'm finding the "one star" comments awfully arid. They seem to be desperate attempts to assert that life is orderly, consistent, and morally unambiguous. I think to see this book only in terms of colonialism or racism is too narrow. Yes, these are central facts of the lives portrayed, and we see the costs they exact from all those involved. However, we also see how often basic humanity moves beyond the barriers the "isms" create. I've read many books about Africa, but this one, better than others, conveys the "senses awake" vitality that makes it so hard for people who have lived there to feel as alive anywhere else. Most of all, though, this is about an incredible family that can't be kept down, can't be divided, can't keep their mouths shut, and can't be forgotten.
Rating:
Summary: A harrowing, enchanting read by a major new writer
Review: "My God, I am the WRONG color." This is one of the brilliant flashes of wry insight delivered up by Alexandra Fuller in this harrowing, enchanting, beautifully rendered account of a childhood lived in the waning days of British colonial Africa. Ms. Fuller has a keen, ever alert eye for myriad vivid details of existence in this exotic tale of one family's survival in some of the most remote and inhospitable places on earth, set against the backdrop of a civil war spinning out of control. Her family manages (somehow) to eke out a living (often hand to mouth) in the melting, oven-breath heat of withering African scrub-land. The picaresque landscape turns out to be every bit as hostile and deadly as the threat from rebels. Honest and unflinching, the author's spellbinding account leaps off the page and graps the reader, pulling one irresistably into a succession of spine-thrilling, rib-tickling scenes: Eye-Burning Hot. Mine Fields. Leopard Poachers. White Racism. Gun-Totting Children. The reader sees what Ms. Fuller sees--sees it all, hears it all, with all the symphonic virtuosity of a passionate, peerless raconteuse. [Sound Track] [Fade-in] Soft cadence of Cape turtledoves, "Work-HARD-er, work-HARD-er." The booming bells of Big Ben crackle listlessly from a makeshift radio mounted, ignominiously, in the branches of an acacia tree and attached to a long tail of wire that requires hours of spinning its aerial web around the arbors of nearby trees. Over here, against a nearby khaki bush, an African girl (nicknamed "Burning Piggy" by darker-skinned classmates) stands out like a large marshmallow (her words), ready to return today to boarding school in neighboring Zambia. At the frontier, in a moment charged with high drama and even higher comedy, she tries not to get herself shot by an extortionist posing as a customs officer who wields an AK-47 like a tennis racket. Later, crossing the narrow bridge spanning the Zambezi River that heralds her entry into Zambia, she scans the water excitedly for hippos, announcing, "If I weren't going back to school today, I would be in heaven." [Fade-out] Whether Ms. Fuller is recounting a bollixed border crossing, an awkward meal with half-starving peasants, a wedding braai feeding hundreds, or rebels storming her family's farmhouse--my God, what a mad mad world! "Don't Let's Go To The Dogs Tonight" is a rare read, a stunning tour-de-force by an exceptionally gifted writer. Pace Ralph Waldo Emerson: I greet Alexandra Fuller at the start of a great career.
Rating:
Summary: Been There
Review: Off in the Colonies literature had its hey day in the 40s, 50s and 60s. Typically it features wild, rafish adventurers roughing it in the outbacks of East or Southern Africa. The wildlife and ecology are superb and there are many invisible servants to serve your every whim. There is play, sex, drugs, violence, extremes, "hardships," and people who can be called characters with a mischievious laugh. But, alas, it's not the same any more. Well, so they say. If you've read this literature before ("White Mischief" comes to mind) and that's your entertainment then go for it. If you're a bit tired of that sort of thing and a bit tired of reading how the people and ecology of Africa are destroyed for profit then you may want to pass on Fuller's book. You're not missing anything. If you would like a more full portrait of present-day Africa, one grounded in the realities of most of the people living there, I would advise you to keep looking.
Rating:
Summary: Memoir of an unconvential life on the African frontier
Review: "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight" is a wonderfully written memoir about a young woman growing up in Africa in the '70s and '80s. It's "The Liar's Club" mixed with "The Poisonwood Bible." Fuller's family were white settlers that chose to live on the outskirts of civilization during turbulent years of civil war. The dangers the family took for granted - terrorists, land mines, all manner of poisonous creatures - are almost incomprehensible. Fuller's family fought to maintain white rule in Rhodesia, and she does an excellent job of handling the sensitive subject. The Fuller family is colorful in the extreme, and Fuller's writing style brings them beautifully and lovingly to life. Make no mistake, this was a tough childhood, and at times it is difficult to remain non-judgmental about the dangers to which the Fuller parents were willing to expose their children. Nevertheless, it is a compelling and very well-written story.
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