The author's voice of herself as a young child is authentic and adds both pathos and humour to the incidents described. I suppose I enjoyed this book; I liked Fuller's honest, nostalgia-free style of writing and found her descriptions of her childhood Africa highly evocative. At first, it seemed that the entire book and the author herself would have laughed mockingly at that quaint desire for commonality. The author tells her story in a very straightforward manner - although there is sadness there is a lot of fun too.

Her mother dances after a bath and the towel slips to expose “blood smeared” thighs; her own belly is distended by worms. I know that a lot of people find great enjoyment from repeat readings, discovering new layers to the story and gaining a better understanding of the book. My grandparents spent time in Zambia when my mother and aunt were small, and my uncle was born there, so I suppose, in some ways, it hit home; the segregation, the animals, the low-humming threat of violence, the drinking, the dusty heat. Fuller weaves together painful family tragedy with a wider understanding of the ambivalence of being part of a separatist white farming community in the midst of Black African independence. It has been criticised by some for not being apologist for the often racist attitudes of Bobo's parents and those of other whites who drift in and out of the account.

The story centers on Fuller's parents, unreconstructed white settlers who were stunned to see Rhodesia fall. The writing is poetic, yet understated, letting the beauty and harshness of the landscape and her experiences speak for themselves. It's a memoir about a white British girl growing up with her family on various farms in different African countries. Alexandra's mother was an alcoholic, and in time she lost her mind slowly as she lost one child after another.

That's the individual mystery of talent, a gift with which Alexandra Fuller is richly blessed, and with which she illuminates her extraordinary memoir. I would have never have dreamed of reading a book about Africa; the country just never appealed to me. Her parents’ wildness is now terrifying to their children and the war seems, at times, just an extension of that fear: “then the outside world starts to join in and has a nervous breakdown all its own, so that it starts to get hard for me to know where Mum’s madness ends and the world’s madness begins”. This is a book I definitely plan to read again, knowing that I will get even more out of it the second time. It is so hot outside that the flamboyant tree outside cracks to itself, as if already anticipating how it will feel to be on fire.Fuller is the author of several memoirs, including Travel Light, Move Fast , Leaving Before the Rains Come , and Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness.

Her mother, in turn, flung herself at their African life and its rugged farm work with the same passion and maniacal energy she brought to everything else. But my friend, who is a teacher, and who lives part time in Africa teaching English at a school she had started, recommended it. Their swimming pools are choked with algae, alive with scorpions, dotted with the small faces of monitor lizards that obscure hanging bodies, four- to six-feet long.Then there is a life-changing tragedy, for which Bobo feels responsible: "My life is sliced in half". it is a contained, soggy madness" but then "it starts to get hard for me to know mere Mum's madness ends and the world's madness begins. Unflinching, beautifully written, and, at times, extremely funny, Alexandra Fuller's book is one of the most honest memoirs of a childhood to be found in contemporary writing. How did her parents meet and what ties did either of them have to Africa before deciding to raise their kids there? I wanted to go back, even though I knew I'd have to experience the heartbreak again, because it was a place I wanted to visit one more time.