africa

I don't know what to say; rather, I have too much to say. I didn't grow up in a godforsaken war zone as Fuller did in Africa but I was neck-deep and more in the colonial environment of Panama. This book cut me to the quick. Even without my background, however, the book is a special compilation of pages that very much need to be read. It's an unusual and amazing book; a reminder of how humanity stretches and can be brought to the edge of redemption before it knows it's not quite human any more. This book will be on my end-of-year Best Books list, no question. Even though I still am flumoxed by its contents. Which, I think was the writer's point. In which case, she done just fine.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked this book up, but was looking for a change of pace. Unlike most of the readers here, I haven't actually read the other book of hers. It was simply something different.

So the book starts off rather charming. People wandering around Africa (Zambia, I suppose) and just describing the absurdity of the condition. Describing the landscape and the people. I enjoyed that. A refreshing change.

As it continues, we actually begin to notice ... what aren't really flaws in the Author's character so much as, well, as the Amazon reviewer put it, craters. You start to see that both the people (K and the Author) are fairly scarred and unhappy people.

This goes on, and the unhappiness really increases substantially. I found the book to have gone from charming and lighthearted to depressing and rather bleak. This, perhaps intentionally, seems to coincide with the landscape. We start off in Zambia at the downright comical parents' fish farm, and continue to a somewhat bleaker K's home, and then back to the States, thoroughly unhappy and indeed missing everything in Africa, and then it gets really unpleasant -- lost in the African outback, being chased by a pet Lion (!), and so on.

So while it might be hard to finish, as the change is so drastic (although mercifully slow), like other art, it is sometimes painful, and we as readers are compelled to do so.

As another reviewer mentioned, there just isn't a hollywood ending. It ends. There isn't anything tied up or completed, the threads of the book remain, sadly, frayed. That, however, I suppose, is the Author's point.

I'd been trying to decide between 3 and 4 stars for the book, and erred on the side of 4. I'd probably read it again, but I'd make sure to do it at a time when I wasn't looking for anything pleasant or uplifting.

Readers of Fuller's first book, Don't Lets Go..., will likely be both pleased and disappointed with Scribbling The Cat. Fuller has lost none of the poetic earthiness and honesty that makes her work so delicious. Sadly, the story line seems somewhat lacking in substance, given the complexity and gravity of the war. Readers are provided with a only a vague itinerary (Mozambique battlefields) and only the briefest thumbnail sketch of the conflicts' major events. Also missing is the charm of Fuller's own innocence. Unlike her first book, birth and fate are not why she finds herself in precarious circumstances. Rather, it's her own questionable judgment and admitted desire to push the envelope. Nevertheless, the characters are memorable, and once again Fuller brings to life the land in all its sensory glory.

The book reads like a gifted-but-underachieving student's school report. As if she attempted to overcome a dearth of solid research by relying heavily on descriptive talent...B+