Book: Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller

A sequel to the book Let's Not Go to the Dogs Tonight which was about the author's childhood in Africa. I read that quite awhile ago and only remember that I liked it (which is why I now blog about the books I read...on account of the lack of memory issue...).

Alexandra's parents are now older of course but still alive and well and living in Zambia, farming fish and bananas. There are great black and white photos in each chapter and an inspired title for the book.

It's a love story, a love story mainly about her remarkable mother, Nicola, who refers to Alexandra's previous book as "that Awful Book" and who is always chiding her daughter about what she will reveal in Under the Tree of Forgetfulness. 

I felt immersed in the most seductive of Africas while reading this book. Once they settle there, certain people just cannot live anywhere else (white folks of course).

(Another story like this is The Last Resort, by Douglas Rogers, also a child with ex-pat parents who lived in Zimbabwe.)

Alexandra tells of her memories and of current encounters and brings them together in funny and sweet tales of her own childhood, but also of her mother's youth and their early years in Kenya and later in Malawi and Zambia. Some are horribly sad and heartbreaking as her parents worked so hard to make a life in Africa. They truly dreamed of a "farm in Africa..." They had the children; they partied; they survived political turmoil; they moved often. At times though, Nicola just checked out of reality, had breakdowns, drank too much, took too many pills. These times were her "wobblies." Alexandra's Dad, Tim, remained steady throughout, loving his wife, working, working, working...raising a family and is still working his banana farm to this day. So they persevered and the book is a loving testament to that endurance.

"In addition, leaving was treason talk, cowardly stuff. Mum makes a fist. 'The Fullers aren't wimps,' she says. 'No you don't walk away from a country you say you love without a fight just because things get rough.' So the war escalated and escalated until very few families--rural, urban, black or white--were untouched by it and still we held on."

"After our siesta and more tea, my parents are back out on the farm, Dad trailing a fragrant pulse of smoke from his pipe, Mum's walking stick thumping the ground with every stride. The soil under the bananas is being sampled for effective microorganisms; the fingerlings in several of the ponds are being counted; the shepherds are beginning to bring the sheep in for the night. Then the air takes on a heavy golden quality and we walk along the boundary with the dogs to Breezers, the pub at the bottom of the farm, in time to watch the egrets come in from the Zambezi to roost."