Cocktail hour under the tree of forgetfulness

Alexandra Fuller, 1969-

Book - 2011

In this sequel to Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, the author returns to Africa and the story of her unforgettable family. In this book she braids a multilayered narrative around the perfectly lit, Happy Valley era Africa of her mother's childhood; the boiled cabbage grimness of her father's English childhood; and the darker, civil war torn Africa of her own childhood. At its heart, this is the story of Fuller's mother, Nicola. Born on the Scottish Isle of Skye and raised in Kenya, Nicola holds dear the kinds of values most likely to get you hurt or killed in Africa: loyalty to blood, passion for land, and a holy belief in the restorative power of all animals. The author interviewed her mother at length and has ...captured her inimitable voice with remarkable precision. We see Nicola and Tim Fuller in their lavender colored honeymoon period, when east Africa lies before them with all the promise of its liquid equatorial light, even as the British empire in which they both believe wanes. But in short order, an accumulation of mishaps and tragedies bump up against history until the couple finds themselves in a world they hardly recognize. We follow the Fullers as they hopscotch the continent, running from war and unspeakable heartbreak, from Kenya to Rhodesia to Zambia, even returning to England briefly. But just when it seems that Nicola has been broken entirely by Africa, it is the African earth itself that revives her. A story of survival and madness, love and war, loyalty and forgiveness, this book is an intimate exploration of the author's family. In the end we find Nicola and Tim at a coffee table under their Tree of Forgetfulness on the banana and fish farm where they plan to spend their final days. In local custom, the Tree of Forgetfulness is where villagers meet to resolve disputes and it is here that the Fullers at last find an African kind of peace. -- From publisher.

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  • Cast of Main Characters
  • Part 1.
  • Nicola Fuller of Central Africa Learns to Fly
  • Nicola Huntingford Is Born
  • Nicola Fuller and the Fancy Dress Parties
  • Roger Huntingford's War
  • Nicola Huntingford Learns to Ride
  • Nicola Fuller of Central Africa Goes to Her High School Reunion
  • Nicola Huntingford, the Afrikaner and the Perfect Horse
  • Nicola Huntingford and the Mau Mau
  • Part 2.
  • Tim Fuller of No Fixed Abode
  • Nicola Fuller and the Perfect House
  • Nicola Fuller in Rhodesia: Round One
  • Nicola Fuller in England
  • Nicola Fuller in Rhodesia: Round Two
  • Olivia
  • Nicola Fuller and the End of Rhodesia
  • Part 3.
  • Nicola Fuller of Central Africa and the Tree of Forgetfulness
  • Nicola Fuller of Central Africa at Home
  • Acknowledgments
  • Appendix: Nicola Fuller of Central Africa: The Soundtrack
  • Glossary: A Guide to Unusual or Foreign Words and Phrases
Review by New York Times Review

"I'M going to write an Awful Book and this time it really will be about you," Alexandra Fuller promises when her mother complains over a favorite walking stick's being broken in a battle with a poisonous snake. Another Awful Book, as far as her mother is concerned. Fuller had not yet been forgiven for publishing the first one in 2001, the intoxicating "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight." Her family may well have felt betrayed by the ruthlessly cleareyed daughter's impression of a dangerous, unruly childhood of minefields and malaria, on a succession of impoverished tobacco and cattle farms in war-torn Kenya, Rhodesia, Botswana, Malawi and Zambia in the 1970s, '80s and '90s. Fuller's parents are courageous, hardworking and colorfully eccentric. They are also stubbornly racist and unremittingly alcoholic; her mother suffers from brutal swings of mania and depression; her father lapses into silence. Three siblings die in infancy. If you have ever wondered what it takes to survive as a settler of inhospitable territory, meet Nicola Fuller of Central Africa, as she often introduces herself. She may have been a child's nightmare - a terrifying, seductive, cruel and abandoning enchantress - but she is a writer's dream. And she knows it. Which must make it easier to write another Awfully Fabulous Book. Fuller has returned to the Africa of war, terror, death and her parents in her second memoir, "Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness." This time, though, she returns as an adult, with the empathy of a more mature writer. She is also the mother of children old enough to remember things. She returns with a yearning to connect with her own inaccessible mother whose disconnectedness seems only to have knifed deeper into her daughter's soul over the years. If "Dogs" was a love story about Africa, "Cocktail Hour" is a love story - with subtle, steady-handed recrimination but without the attendant rancor - about her mother, "the broken, splendid, fierce mother I have." Alexandra Fuller describes herself as a "reasonably pliable witness" to her mother's dramatic life. About her first book, she says, "I had felt more than a little encouraged to write it - directed, even - by Nicola Fuller of Central Africa herself." Well, children are like blotting paper; the trouble is you never know what's going to soak in, or where the stain will spread. "Dogs" was written in the throes of remembering; "Cocktail Hour" recaptures the past through reporting. Fuller reunites with her parents for a holiday in South Africa, during which she nudges them through their histories, listening as "the doves in the tree above our heads are wing clattering into their night's sleep." She does not censor the sanguine, cracked perspective of the colonialist. When her mother's father shoots a Kikuyu, he is sentenced to one day in jail. "There was an outcry from the community. 'My father was the starter at the races. ... He couldn't possibly spend the day in jail. He was the only one who knew how to do the starter flags.'" Fuller visits Kenya - but Nicola distances herself from the highborn, decadent Happy Valley set. She remembers Inky Porter, an English aristocrat who hired Nicola's mother as a baby sitter, handing over a newborn infant so she could join a hunt in Uganda. The baby was born "pickled in gin and withdrawing from cocaine." It "died in agony ... in my mother's arms." Nicola is impatient with the romantic mystique of Kenya: "No one talks about the poor dead baby." Alexandra returns to the Burma Valley in Zimbabwe, looking for traces of her family: "Robandi is the geography of my nightmares. ... If I peel back the corner of memories of that place, what races in is too big for any of me to feel at one sitting - no mere piece of land can be responsible for that." Three of her siblings died in what became Zimbabwe, one a toddler who had been left in the distracted care of 8-year-old Alexandra and a neighbor. "Cocktail Hour" is disturbing in places, funny in others. It pulses with life and love. Nicola's voice threatens to drown out everyone else's, but fortunately she's hilarious, creative, opinionated, ribald and tragic. She seems to have Lived Life in Capital Letters - and at first, this contaminates Fuller's writing. Early chapters are peppered with references to the Awful Book, which give way, for example, to "Collect Aborigines or Begin a Breed of Dogs." I'm a reader with a High Tolerance for Capital Experiences, but these seemed gratuitous, Nancy Mitford wannabes. But Fuller quickly muffles this tic. When she is in the company of her quiet, reserved, stalwart father, her writing becomes elegiac. "Dad found comfort in the emptiness: the lonely ribs of a long, gravel road, a makeshift bed under wild stars in an insect-sung night." Her mother gave her material, but her father allowed her to find her voice. Nicola Fuller dragged her belongings from one farm to another; with every move a few more possessions were cast off, until just about the only thing to have survived was a set of orange Le Creuset pots, their bottoms blackened. Everything else was "lost, stolen, broken, died, left behind," she says. Much the same could be said of her life. But it is resilience that shines through: a tender, loving, attentive marriage miraculously survives poverty and calamity. Two daughters remain connected, each in her own way. And the family's shared love of Africa endures. After a lifetime of loss and failure, Nicola and Tim, in their 50s, decide to try one last time to own land in Africa. "Land is Mum's love affair and it is Dad's religion." They build a farm on the banks of the Zambezi River in Zambia and successfully raise bananas and fish. Nicola chooses a site for their new home under a large Tree of Forgetfulness. "They say ancestors stay inside it," their neighbor explains. "If there is some sickness or if you are troubled by spirits, then you sit under the Tree of Forgetfulness and your ancestors will assist you with whatever is wrong. . . . All your troubles and arguments will be resolved." I suppose cocktail hours have a way of resolving things. Writers turn to memoir for all kinds of good (and bad) reasons - but never to forget. We compulsively revisit an episode that shattered a life, or pick at a shard of memory that demands to be prized out of the bedrock of our souls. We work memory over, perhaps hoping, subconsciously, that things will turn out differently - or more realistically, that we will discover a key that unlocks a memory's mysterious urgency. That drive to make sense, to find a deeper meaning in the shallows of daily life, to turn splintered chaos into a coherent story, makes a memoir worth reading. And "Cocktail Hour" hits the mark. It may be regarded as a prequel, or a sequel, to "Dogs." It hardly matters. The two memoirs form a fascinating diptych of mirrors, one the reflection of a child's mind, the other of an adult's. Images bounce and refract over the years; the reader catches a glimpse of the adult in the child, and the child in the adult. Taken together, as they ought to be, the books transport us to a grand landscape of love, loss, longing and reconciliation. Fuller's two memoirs form a diptych of mirrors, one the reflection of a child's mind, the other of an adult's. Dominique Browning's memoir, "Slow Love," is being published in paperback this month; she writes regularly at the blog Slow Love Life.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [September 4, 2011]
Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* In her fourth memoir, Fuller revisits her vibrant, spirited parents, first introduced in Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight (2002), which her mother referred to as tha. awful book. While that so-calle. awful boo. focused on Fuller's memories of growing up in Rhodesia during that country's civil war, this one focuses solely on her parents: their youth, their meeting, and their struggles to find a home on the continent they are both so passionate about. Fuller's mother, Nicola, the child of Scottish parents, grew up in Kenya, while her father, Tim, had an austere childhood in London. Tim wandered the world before landing in Kenya and meeting Nicola. Readers will recall the hardships the couple faced from Fuller's first memoir: the deaths of three of their five children and the loss of their home in Rhodesia. This time around, Nicola is well aware her daughter is writing another memoir, and shares some of her memories under the titular Tree of Forgetfulness, which looms large by the elder Fullers' house in Zambia. Fuller's prose is so beautiful and so evocative that readers will feel that they, too, are sitting under that tree. A gorgeous tribute to both her parents and the land they love.--Huntley, Kristin. Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

A sardonic follow-up to her first memoir about growing up in Rhodesia circa the 1970s, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, this work traces in wry, poignant fashion the lives of her intrepid British parents, determined to stake a life on their farm despite the raging African civil war around them. Fuller's mother is the central figure, Nicola Fuller of Central, as she is known, born "one million percent Highland Scottish"; she grew up mostly in Kenya in the 1950s, was schooled harshly by the nuns in Eldoret, learned to ride horses masterfully, and married a dashing Englishman before settling down on their own farm, first in Kenya, then Rhodesia, where the author (known as Bobo) and her elder sister, Vanessa, were born in the late 1960s. The outbreak of civil war in the mid-1970s resolved the family to dig in deeper on their farm in Robandi, rather than flee, to order to preserve a life of colonial privilege and engrained racism that was progressively vanishing. While the girls dispersed as grownups (the author lives in Wyoming with her American husband), the parents managed to secure a fish and banana farm in the middle of the Zambezi valley in Zambia, and under a legendary Tree of Forgetfulness (where ancestors are supposed to reside and help resolve trouble) they ruminate with their visitors over the long-gone days, full of death and loss, the ravages of war, and a determination to carry on. Fuller achieves another beautifully wrought memoir. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Fuller's previous well-received memoir Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood dealt with her time growing up amid the harsh realities of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) during civil war in the 1970s. In her new memoir, billed as a combination of prequel and sequel, she focuses on her mother, Nicola Fuller, whose adventurous spirit, droll humor, and abiding love for Africa were challenged by the tragic deaths of three of her young children and her subsequent mental breakdown. Fuller evocatively depicts her mother's Kenya childhood, marriage to Tim Fuller, and the ensuing chaos and joys of raising a family and eking out a precarious living amid the wild and inspiring African landscape. Her eloquent depiction of her mother's darker sides, including racism, alcoholism, and mental illness, reveals a fascinating, flawed, and funny woman whose story illuminates the contradictions and extremes of Africa -itself. -VERDICT Unsparing, well written, and spiced with many compelling anecdotes, this vivid tale of a one-of-a-kind matriarch and her family's fortitude through adversity and absurdity will be relished by memoir fans and recreational readers interested in Africa. Such readers may also enjoy Isak Dinesen's classic Out of Africa or Barbara Kingsolver's dark novel The Poisonwood Bible. [See Prepub Alert, 1/31/11.]-Ingrid Levin, Salve Regina Univ. Lib., Newport, RI (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Revisiting her family story first introduced in Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight (2001), Fuller (The Legend of Colton H. Bryant, 2008, etc.) employs her mother's exceptional life as a pivot point for chronicling her parent's perseverance overcoming personal tragedies and the political chaos of mid-20th-century Africa.The golden-hued life of white settlers in Kenya, ensured by the trappings of the British empire, was already a mirage by the mid 1960s when Fuller's parents married. In 1964, the Republic of Kenya was born, ending white rule. For several years, the young couple lived idyllic lives, but the political climate was deteriorating. Like many "jittery settlers" Fuller's grandparents sold their farm and returned to Britain, never to return to Africa. Fuller's mother was devastated, and she and the author's father remained but "receded further and further south as African countries in the north gained their independence." The family resettled into a new home in Rhodesia, but a family tragedy soon found them, precipitating the family's relocation to England, where the author was born. The dreary, rain-soaked island held little appeal for the family; Fuller's mother recalls, "We longed for the warmth and freedom, the real open spaces, the wild animals, the sky at night." After returning to Africa and borrowing money for a farm in Rhodesia, the family found themselves engulfed by civil war. After another devastating family loss catapulted Fuller's mother into a cascade of breakdowns, their luck turned when the Zambian government issued them a 99-year lease on a farm. During a 2010 visit, Fuller's parents were happy and at peace, their farm "a miracle of productivity, order and routine."Gracefully recounted using family recollections and photos, the author plumbs the narrative with a humane and clear-eyed gazea lush story, largely lived within a remarkable place and time.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Praise for Alexandra Fuller's Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness   "[E]lectrifying . . . Writing in shimmering, musical prose . . . Ms. Fuller manages the difficult feat of writing about her mother and father with love and understanding, while at the same time conveying the terrible human costs of the colonialism they supported. . . . Although Ms. Fuller would move to America with her husband in 1994, her own love for Africa reverberates throughout these pages, making the beauty and hazards of that land searingly real for the reader." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "Ten years after publishing Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood , Alexandra (Bobo) Fuller treats us in this wonderful book to the inside scoop on her glamorous, tragic, indomitable mother. . . . Bobo skillfully weaves together the story of her romantic, doomed family against the background of her mother's remembered childhood." -- The Washington Post "Another stunner . . . The writer's finesse at handling the element of time is brilliant, as she interweaves near-present-day incidents with stories set in the past. Both are equally vivid. . . . With Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness Alexandra Fuller, master memoirist, brings her readers new pleasure. Her mum should be pleased." -- The Cleveland Plain Dealer "Fuller's narrative is a love story to Africa and her family. She plumbs her family story with humor, memory, old photographs, and a no-nonsense attitude toward family foibles, follies, and tragedy. The reader is rewarded with an intimate family story played out against an extraordinary landscape, told with remarkable grace and style." -- Minneapolis Star Tribune "[Fuller] conveys the magnetic pull that Africa could exert on the colonials who had a taste for it, the powerful feeling of attachment. She does not really explain that feeling--she is a writer who shows rather than tells--but through incident and anecdote she makes its effects clear, and its costs." -- The Wall Street Journal "[A]n artistic and emotional feat." -- The Boston Globe "[An] eccentric, quixotic, and downright dangerous tale with full room for humor, love, and more than a few highballs." -- The Huffington Post " Cocktail Hour [ Under the Tree of Forgetfulness ] subtly explores the intersections of personality, history, and landscape in ways that are continually fresh and thoughtful." -- Charleston Post and Courier "Gracefully recounted using family recollections and photos, the author plumbs the narrative with a humane and clear-eyed gaze--a lush story, largely lived within a remarkable place and time." -- Kirkus Reviews "In this sequel to her 2001 memoir, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight , which her unflattered mum calls the 'Awful Book,' Duller gives a warm yet wry account of her British parents' arduous life in Africa. . . . With searing honesty and in blazingly vibrant prose, Fuller re-creates her mother's glorified Kenyan girlhood and visits her forever-wild parents at their Zambian banana and fish farm today. The result is an entirely Awesome Book." -- More Magazine "Fuller brings Africa to life, both its natural splendor and the harsher realities of day-to-day existence, and sheds light on her parents in all their humanness--not a glaring sort of light, but the soft equatorial kind she so beautifully describes in this memoir." -- BookPage "Fuller revisits her vibrant, spirited parents, first introduced in Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight (2001), which her mother referred to as that 'awful book'. . . . This time around, Nicola is well aware her daughter is writing another memoir, and shares some of her memories under the titular Tree of Forgetfulness, which looms large by the elder Fullers' house in Zambia. Fuller's prose is so beautiful and so evocative that readers will feel that they, too, are sitting under that tree. A gorgeous tribute to both her parents and the land they love." -- Booklist (starred review) "A sardonic follow-up to her first memoir about growing up in Rhodesia circa the 1970s, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight , this work traces in wry, poignant fashion the lives of her intrepid British parents. . . . Fuller achieves another beautifully wrought memoir." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) PENGUIN BOOKS COCKTAIL HOUR UNDER THE TREE OF FORGETFULNESS Alexandra Fuller was born in England in 1969. In 1972, she moved with her family to a farm in southern Africa. She lived in Africa until her mid-twenties. In 1994 she moved to Wyoming, where she now resides. For Charlie--guide extraordinaire--with my love Table of Contents Praise for Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness About the Author Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Cast of Main Characters   PART ONE Nicola Fuller of Central Africa Learns to Fly Nicola Huntingford Is Born Nicola Fuller and the Fancy Dress Parties Roger Huntingford's War Nicola Huntingford Learns to Ride Nicola Fuller of Central Africa Goes to Her High School Reunion Nicola Huntingford, the Afrikaner and the Perfect Horse Nicola Huntingford and the Mau Mau   PART TWO Tim Fuller of No Fixed Abode Nicola Fuller and the Perfect House Nicola Fuller in Rhodesia: Round One Nicola Fuller in England Nicola Fuller in Rhodesia: Round Two Olivia Nicola Fuller and the End of Rhodesia   PART THREE Nicola Fuller of Central Africa and the Tree of Forgetfulness Nicola Fuller of Central Africa at Home   Acknowledgments Appendix - Nicola Fuller of Central Africa: The Soundtrack Glossary CAST OF MAIN CHARACTERS Nicola Christine Victoria Fuller née Huntingford--the author's mother, also known as Nicola Fuller of Central Africa, Mum or Tub Timothy Donald Fuller--the author's father, also known as Dad Vanessa Margaret Fuller--the author's sister, also known as Van Edith Margaret Belfinley Huntingford née Macdonald--the author's maternal grandmother, also known as Granny or Donnie or Mrs. Huntingford Roger Lowther Huntingford--the author's maternal grandfather, also known as Hodge Glennis Duthie--the author's maternal aunt, also known as Auntie Glug or Glug Sandy Duthie--the author's maternal uncle by marriage Donald Hamilton Connell-Fuller--the author's paternal grandfather Ruth Henrietta Fuller--the author's paternal grandmother, also known as Boofy Tony Fuller--the author's paternal uncle, also known as Uncle Toe Alexandra Fuller--the author, also known as Bo or Bobo PART ONE The mind I love must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody's fathomed the depth of, and paths threaded with flowers planted by the mind.   --KATHERINE MANSFIELD Nicola Fuller of Central Africa Learns to Fly Mkushi, Zambia, circa 1986 Mum in an Eldoret theatrical production. Kenya, circa 1963.   O ur Mum--or Nicola Fuller of Central Africa, as she has on occasion preferred to introduce herself--has wanted a writer in the family as long as either of us can remember, not only because she loves books and has therefore always wanted to appear in them (the way she likes large, expensive hats, and likes to appear in them ) but also because she has always wanted to live a fabulously romantic life for which she needed a reasonably pliable witness as scribe. "At least she didn't read you Shakespeare in the womb," my sister says. "I think that's what gave me brain damage." "You do not have brain damage," I say. "That's what Mum says." "Well, I wouldn't listen to her. You know what she's like," I say. "I know," Vanessa says. "For example," I say, "lately, she's been telling me that I must have been switched at birth." "Really?" Vanessa tilts her head this way and that to get a better view of my features. "Let me have a look at your nose from the other side." "Stop it," I cover my nose. Excerpted from Cocktail Hour under the Tree of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.