Reviews for Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

The average rating for Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-06-05 00:00:00 Sunny Bhullar This is one of my top-ten favorite books of all time. An extremely compelling memoir, well-written, poignant but not maudlin or precious. I've read it twice and feel another reread coming on. The brutal honesty in this story is startling, and Fuller does not set out to insert political or social critique into her story. This is probably unsettling for readers who come face-to-face with her family's colonialist attitudes and expect to hear her criticize and critique them. However, I prefer that Fuller let the story stand on its own. The book doesn't set out to dissect "Issues," but rather to tell one particular- and it is a particularly heartbreaking, frightening, disturbing, visceral, and funny one- story.

Review # 2 was written on 2007-12-15 00:00:00 Joyce Hamel I almost gave this book four stars because it was very well-written and evocative. But I just never felt much of a connection to the book or to any of the characters. The author's writing skill made it a pleasant enough read - at least, pleasant enough to finish. But it definitely wasn't a can't-put-it-down kind of book. If I had to give concrete criticisms of the book, the main one would be that she doesn't develop any characters outside of her immediately family (in fact, it seemed her family didn't have any substantial relationships with anyone, other than each other), and even those characters could use a bit more context. (Why were they in Africa? I mean, what really motivated them to keep slogging it out in Africa, really? Where did their racism come from? How did she feel about their racism? How did her parents meet and what ties did either of them have to Africa before deciding to raise their kids there? What motivated them to raise children in a country in which a civil war was raging?) On the other hand, she writes terrific dialogue and her sensory descriptions of Africa made me feel like I was there.