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Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness

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Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness

By: Alexandra Fuller
Narrated by: Bianca Amato
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About this listen

Alexandra Fuller won worldwide attention, popular acclaim, and critical accolades for her memoir of her childhood in Africa, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight. This engaging follow-up explores Fuller’s parents’ childhoods and charts the trajectories of their lives through all the British couple’s experiences in war-torn Africa.

Fuller 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. Fuller interviewed her mother at length and has captured her inimitable voice with remarkable precision. Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness is as funny, terrifying, exotic, and unselfconscious as Nicola herself.

©2011 Alexandra Fuller (P)2011 Recorded Books, LLC Motherhood Parenting & Families Relationships Women Funny War Heartfelt

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All stars
Most relevant  
your memories are so vivid and your awfull books have brought back so many of my own . Thank you
Rob

this land we called home..

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I have read Alexandra Fuller's memoir "Don't Let's go to the Dogs Tonight" so when this book was recommended to me, I decided to give it a try. As I grew up in Africa, I could identify with a lot of the emotional attachment the mother, Nichola, felt about the various countries the family lived in and her determination to stay somewhere on the continent. However, I didn't like the voice of the narrator. I found it hard and business-like and for most of the book not really in keeping with Nichola, who she was representing. Towards the end, I felt her voice fitted Nichola more because of how Nichola had had to toughen up to cope with all the tragedy and hardship she had faced. What I couldn't understand about her, however, was how she always seemed to take the toughest road, the most difficult places in Africa to live, and keep going back for more when one phase came to an end. The book is very well written and I enjoyed the second half more than the first.

A Story of how Africa gets into your soul

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Loved it. Great story, well written, very well narrated, captivating! Highly recommend it to those interested in Africa

Brilliant

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I was born and brought up in Zimbabwe- unfortunately, as described, as a “chicken runner”, leaving the war in 1974 as a 15 year old teenager with my parents. However, now in the cold, damp, grey skies of the UK, I have fond memories of an idilic childhood and Africa will always be in my heart.
Alexandra’s account of her childhood, so honestly and descriptively . Well done to her and to Bianca, who beautifully narrated this captivating story.

Wonderful!

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Great listen and would recommend to others interested hearing about family life in the bush for expats in a time of

Good narrative

Good storyline

Excellent tale of Africa

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Amazing story. In the first half it just rolled along.... so I wasn't prepared for change.....the awful tragedies that befell the family. Oh my goodness how would you cope with all that? But they did somehow survive, albeit with plenty of emotional and psychological bruises.
The life they led was fascinating but also very tough. Continually trying to make enough money to survive often doing so just by the goodness of others.
I would read more by this author.
It took me a while to get used to the narrators voice and I could've done without the singing lol! But having said that, the singing probably helps us understand Nichola's great, very-eccentric but lovable character. Great book.

Loved it, I will recommend!

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Great fun and filled with wonderful memories. Just a few mispronunciations but still, marvellous. Thank you.

That’s Africa, Baby!!

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A tender and exciting memoir which holds within it a time, a place and those who had Africa running in their veins even when it no longer held them.

A sense of Africa

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if you've read Don't Let's Go To The Dog's Tonight, then you'll enjoy this. As a child who grew up in colonial Africa, I loved it

great read

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Loved another book written by Alexandra Fuller. Makes for a less boring day behind the steering wheel.

Excellent storytelling.

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