Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness

Stunning, Enthralling. Poignant. Astounding. Jaw-dropping. Witty. Breathtaking. Educational. Awesome. Courageous. Electrifying. Pulverizing. Shimmering. Stunning. Searing. Vibrant. Evocative. I give up, there are not enough adjectives for me to use to describe Fuller's incredible memoirs of her and her family's life/experiences in Africa - many of these adjectives have been used in many of the wonderful Editorial Reviews.Although each of Fuller's three memoirs can be read as 'stand alones', part of me would recommend reading them in the order they were written. But no matter which you read first, you will want to read the others. Firstly there is "Let's Not Go To The Dogs Tonight", then "Cocktails under the Tree of Forgetfulness", then "Leaving Before the Rains Come"(the latter is a south Africanism for 'get out while you can'). How could one NOT read these memoirs based solely on their titles and book covers????I read the second memoir first, could not download the third fast enough, and am just embarking on the first one, which describes Fuller's growing-up years in Africa. I am addicted to Fuller's family and their heart-wrenching journeys.Fuller's second memoir (Cocktails....) was written 10 years after her first. In the second, she provides greater details about her unbelievable mother and her mother's remembered childhood. (Fuller's mother called the first memoir "The Awful Book"!) As one reviewer put it: "This narrative is a love story to Africa and Fuller's family". "Cocktails..." is written at a point whereby Fuller visits her parents at their Zambian banana and fish farm. The memories are shared by her mother under the Tree of Forgetfulness which is right outside the parents' home. But oh so much more is shared about the family/experiences.The third memoir ("Leaving...") chronicles Fuller's life in Wyoming (where she moved with her husband who is from Boston whom she met in Africa) and the circumstances surrounding the eventual dissolution of their marriage. Oh but there are such astounding revelations in this memoir of Fuller & Charlie's experiences in Africa before winding up in Wyoming. The description of her husband's accident and the aftermath rivals anything I've ever read - I was gutted.Fuller's interweaving of past and current events is seamless (I personally have no issue with an author going back and forth in time, interjecting fascinating side roads to the story).I for one was so ignorant going into the reads about Zambia, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, all other places references, the history of the colonials, etc. I had to have a map next to me from the very beginning.I shall forever be shaking my head at the trials/tribulations Fuller's parents chose to endure while living through all that happened while living in Africa - and chose not to leave. You will cry and you will laugh at the parents' 'personalities'.Then there is Fuller's writing. Oh. My. God. Even throughout all the stories, the geography, the surreal occurrences, it's the writing that brought me to my knees. I will never get to Africa, but thanks to Fuller - I've now been there.Always always, throughout all three memoirs, is Fuller's visceral, unending bond to Africa. It's in her blood, her soul, and one wonders if she ultimately will finish out her future final days there. We avid fans of her can only hope that Fuller's third memoir will not be her last.

Great price

While there is, as one critic mentioned, considerable overlap with the author's first book (Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight), I found this one even more fascinating and compelling, with many elements I consider when evaluating a memoir: * It contains lyrical and vivid writing that pulls the reader into the sights, sounds, smells, and emotions of the narrative's places, especially Africa. * It offers an introduction to a world and culture and place that is so utterly foreign to me, I felt as though I had gone on a grand safari myself. * Its character development was both harsh and compassioniate, especially the rendering of the author's mother "Nicola Fuller of Central Africa." * The story provides keen insight into the often unmentioned civilian victims of war. * The narrative explores life's emotional complexities of, and brutalities against, the human heart, yet it moves quickly enough not to become maudlin or mired dark places. * It inspired me to think about how I would react in some of the unspeakably awful circumstances that Nicola Fuller, the author (Nicola's daughter), and others in the family had to face. We judge others at our own peril. * The author's ability to step back far enough to see her family with the eye of an artist and the heart of a loved one impressed me. * The book succeeds, I believe, in conveying why anyone might be willing, against incredible odds, to keep coming back to what must be a very seductive part of the world.Here are some quotes I noted:Speaking of her mother's childhood in Kenya: "It was, in many ways, a charmed and feral childhood."Describing the brutal landscape: "It was toward the end of the long dry season; the wind had been red all day with dust blown in from Uganda and settling on everything like powdered blood, the sun blistered out of a high, clear sky."...and her mother's garden: "an encouraged tangle of bougainvillea and passion fruit vines, beds of lilies and strelitzia, rows of lilac bushes and caladiums looming over borders of impatiens.""War is Africa's perpetual ripe fruit. There is so much injustice to resolve, such desire for revenge in the blood of the people, such crippling corruption of power, such unseemly scramble for the natural resources. The wind of power shifts and there go the fruit again, tumbling toward the ground, each war more inventively terrible than the last."As the author tells the story of her brother's illness and death: "My impuse is impossible: I want to reach back through the years and protect my young parents from what happens next.""Surely until all of us own and honor one another's dead, until we have admitted to our murders and forgiven one another and ourselves for what we have done, there can be no truce, no dignity and no peace.""People often ask why my parents haven't left Africa. Simply put, they have been possessed by this land."

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight is one of my favourite books. Told from the innocent perspective of a child, it is funny and sad and above all, honest.I approached Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness with eager anticipation and have to admit, found the first few chapters disappointing. I felt that Alexandra Fuller had compromised the vivid characterization of her eccentric wonderful mother, in order to please her and make amends for what the family called the "awful book". But I was wrong.Tree of Forgetfulness is more serious than Dogs because it is related by the grown up Alexandra, or Bobo as her family call her, so lacks the naivety of the child. From this adult, knowing viewpoint, it is somehow all the more heartbreaking. The story of her parents' courage, resilience and humour in the face of insuperable tragedy in the harsh, punishing Continent of Africa - Kenya during the Mau Mau, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) during the war of independence, is told with the generosity and warmth of a devoted and loving daughter."Nicola Fuller of Central Africa" always wanted a writer in the family to recount her "fabulously romantic life". Her life may not have turned out as romantically as she had hoped, but it was full of adventure and love and she couldn't have wished for a better "scribe" than her own daughter to relate it.

I read this after enjoying the author's first memoir "Don't let's go to the dogs tonight" very much and I loved this book too. This book tells the story of her parents, particularly her mother, and their struggles to find a permanent home in Africa, the continent they love. It is another un-putdownable book. It compliments "Don't let's go to the dogs tonight perfectly". Although some of the family stories described are the same it offers an adult perspective on events previously described by Bobo as a child. As a result, this is a more reflective book and it is at times desperately sad, but it is enfused with humour throughout. The writing is amazing. It is very evocative of time and place and the characters really come alive. I have really missed Bobo, Van and their parents after finishing this book and can still hear their voices and the comments I imagine they would make about different situations long after finishing. The thing that really resonates from this book is love. It is full of love. Love for Africa, and the land, love for her parents and her parents love for each other. Some of my favourite parts are when Bobo's mother encapsulates the conversation she and Bobo have been having in a couple of shouted words for her hard of hearing father - tender, funny and very real! I love this author and cannot recommend her books enough. So glad I found her.

I love this book, it resonates hugely with me. It's not just about Nicola Fuller of Central Africa. It's about Africa itself, the one we who come from Africa all love. Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa. The descriptions, both of the land and the people of every denomination are so recognisable.Nicola Fuller of Central Africa (for that is how this fascinating woman describes herself) is lovingly portrayed by her daughter, warts and all, and I fell completely in love with her and her patient husband Tim.Whilst this book is dominated by Nicola Fuller of Central Africa, Tim is not neglected. Portrayed so well with gentle affection alongside his wife, he comes over strong, silent, supportive and desperately trying to make sense of what is happening around him in the only way he can. There were and are many of his kind in Africa.Alexandra Fuller is a bit out with some of her historical information about Kenya, and so I give her the benefit of the doubt with regard to dates and events both in Kenya and other parts of Africa. Somewhere on the web there is the information that Kenya obtained Independence on 12th December 1964 and this is obviously the source that so many people quote, because I've read it time and again and it annoys me. Kenya obtained Independence on 12th December 1963. It also makes me wary of a lot of information available on the web!But these details in this book are not that important and only play a small part. They don't spoil an excellent read, a real page turner.Alexandra Fuller has a wonderful way of drawing you in, holding your attention, and taking you on an adventurous ride with two typical African characters, their children and a whole host of others. We share the good times and the happy times, the sad times and the bad times, the triumphs and the tragedies, the hopes and the dreams, and the very real fears. This is the story of two very human, very brave and some might say eccentric people that it has been my privilege to meet between these pages. I left this adventurous ride a little happier for having been allowed to share it.Reading this book, turning each page with pleasure, reluctant to put it down, I can say that this is a book not just for Africans but for everyone young and old.I enjoyed Alexandra Fuller's "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight", I didn't enjoy "Scribbling the Cat". I enjoyed "The Legend of Colton H. Bryant" and I love "Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulnes". It's up there with my ten best books, I didn't want it to end.

This is a wonderful little book, the third written by Alexandra Fuller on her family's life and experiences in Africa. In this book Alexandra's mother Nicola Fuller is the centre-piece and everything else is set in the context of her mother's vivacity, eccentricity and bouts of depression. Her mother's family origins in the Isle of Skye makes it all the more surprising that Nicola Fuller should have Kenya in her blood.She left Kenya soon after independence when the life they had known was gone for ever and amazingly they moved to Rhodesia and soon found themselves on the frontline, literally, in the war which eventually brought Mugabe to power. After a spell in Derbyshire the family returned to Africa, Zambia this time, and that is where this story finishes, on the family's banana and fish farm on the banks of the Zambezi.A wonderful story, very well told.See Alexandra Fullers other books  Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood ; Scribbling the Cat ;both set in the African bush and the painful but gripping story of  The Legend of Colton H Bryant  which is set in Ms Fuller's adopted homeland of USA. Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African ChildhoodScribbling the CatThe Legend of Colton H Bryant

Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness - Alexandra FullerI had to look up when I first came across Alexandra Fuller - it was in 2006 when I read "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight". It had a very dramatic effect of me and besides making me laugh - it made me very sad as well. I then read "Scribbling the Cat" and finished off my review saying "Bobo - did you learn nothing from your mother's behaviour? How could you be so irresponsible?" So I kind of put off reading this book, until my curiosity couldn't keep me away from it any longer.Oh Bobo - you've done a truly fantastic job with this account of your mother and father!! What a beautiful dedication to your parents. I laughed lots, cried several times and just came away from it with such a good feeling. It never ceases to amaze me how much stress/pain/chaos the human spirit has to endure and the Fullers' have certainly had their huge share of this but ........ laughter has always been close behind, helping them get on with their extraordinary lives.