Blog Post #5

I am still reading Alexandra Fuller’s Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight and I am still impressed by her bold style of writing. As I read on, I admire her sense of adventure, entirely appropriate for the story. She is the perfect narrator of this story and gives the book a flavor no other author could have provided. Her writing style is what gets me most about her book. The story itself is perfectly splendid, however, I think her purpose of writing her childhood story growing up as a White African is most forcefully conveyed not by her experiences, but by the way she retells her experiences through her unique writing style. A passage I thought further claimed to be Fuller’s work was her response when asked, “But what are you?”

My God, I am the wrong color. The way I am burned by the sun, scorched by flinging sand, prickled by heat. The way my skin erupts in miniature volcanoes of protest in the presence of tsetse flies, mosquitoes, ticks. The way I stand out against the khaki bush like a large marshmallow to a gook with a gun. White. African. White-African. (ch.2, pg.10)

In truth, she is right. Fuller is not the “Well-bred Scottish” she really is. Raised in a variety of African countries, she lives the African life. She grew up with lions lurking in her garden and hyenas howling just beyond her windowsill. However, her descriptive response to “what” she is, an unexpected question, is equally as unexpected, even more.

Blog Post #4

Blog Post #

The book I am currently reading is called Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight. What has caught me most about this book so far is the introduction to the story. It most definitely had an effective attention getter. It caught me off-guard, I read it twice.

“Mum says, “Don’t come creeping into our room at night.”
They sleep with loaded guns beside them on the bedside rugs. She says, “Don’t startle us when we’re sleeping.”
“Why not?”
“We might shoot you.”
“Oh.”
“By mistake.” (1.3)

If I am not mistaken, I imagine this passage caught you off guard as well. Maybe even more than me. You see, I had some prior information about this book. I knew it was about English family who go live in Africa. The family is well equipped and guarded against “terrorists”. But that was it. It’s still a rather alarming yet unique way to start a book. However, I really admire the boldness used to launch the story. Alexandra Fuller, the author, really does a splendid job setting a good portion of the scene with minimal words and maximum impact. She opening passage encouraged me to dive in the rest of the book with passion and enthusiasm. It provided just the right amount of “out there” without being entirely random.
And just as the reader predicts, the rest of the story proceeds in the same “out there” fashion as the opening passage. After all, how much more “out there” can you get than the African wilderness?