Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness

Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness is a balm for the reading soul. After spending the last few weeks slogging through a couple of books that I still have decided whether to finish (no titles yet, in case I do!), Alexandra Fuller's Cocktail Hour felt like coming home.

Part memoir, part biography, this book is a clear-eyed look at the lives and choices of Fuller's parents, Tim and Nicola Fuller, whose African lives began in the era of British colonialism - the Happy Valley set comes in for more than an occasional mention - span the final, bloody years of Rhodesia, and continue into the sub-Saharan Africa of the twenty-first century. It is a fascinating account of British colonialism and the choices, which Fuller seems to both understand and be unable fathom, of those like her parents who fought so desperately to hold onto their piece of Africa.

It is also a daughter's ode to her mother, all the more poignant for the tragedies and madness that have dotted the landscape of Nicola Fuller's life. Few lines have struck me with more power than Alexandra Fuller's observation that "the pathos and the gift of life is that we cannot know which will be our defining heartbreak, or our most victorious joy."

Initially, I was expecting Cocktail Hour to unfold along the lines of The Last Resort, probably, foolishly, because both are set in Zimbabwe, which is not exactly a hotbed of travel writing or memoirs or literature these days. The books are quite different - Fuller's Cocktail Hour is much heavier than the often-laugh-out-loud The Last Resort - but it is a satisfying read in every respect.

Four stars.

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club

Dorothy L. Sayer's The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club is quite the opposite: a pleasant little read, in traditional, British-cuppa-by-the-fireside fashion. Written in 1928, it's in league with Dame Agatha and other contemporaries of that era. (The afterward notes that the 1920s were the golden era of detective fiction.)

So...elderly General Fentiman is found dead in his favorite chair in his favorite club on Armistice Day. Having suffered from heart trouble for some years, the case would appear to be open and closed, and would have been, except that his also-elderly sister has died on the same day, and the timing of the deaths has important implications on her estate. If he died before 10:07am, the money goes to the young woman who's looked after her for many years; if after 10:07am, it goes to the general's grandsons. And so begins Lord Wimsey's association with the case, as he unravels what should have been a tidy little death.

The Unpleasantness at Bellona Club is an excellent rainy day read for those who enjoy the genre. Mind candy, as it were.

Four stars.

Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip

I was in China last month, and I was in awe. Shanghai, at least, is everything I love in Asia and lots of things I don't. It is high tech, and it is inefficient as hell. It is souped up Ferraris and ancient mopeds, the latter not infrequently usurping the pedestrians' right-of-way on sidewalks. It is gleaming skyscrapers and ancient temples and back alleys that were formerly opium dens. Gucci and Prada and "Gucci" and "Prada." You get the idea. And, yet, Peter Hessler makes me feel I have missed the essential China. (Admittedly, I felt the same after reading Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper.)

Hessler's Country Driving is a compilation of his adventures in China 15-20 years ago, when cars were rare(ish), roads were new, and farmers regularly tossed crops into the middle of the road, where vehicles could not miss them. (As Hessler observes, "there's no other act that so publicly violates both traffic safety and food hygiene," but the practice was tolerated "because threshing is easiest when somebody else's tires do the work.") Also, Hessler encounters a licensed Zhejiang Province Demolitioner, who he notes was fully licensed to blow up the province. Literally: mountain upon mountain met its end at the hands of this particular demolitioner, who carried a separate certification attesting to the fact that he'd never had an accident - no small thing in a place where Hessler repeatedly witnesses flame in close proximity to natural gas.

Some of the tales were familiar from his Strange Stones, and the commentary on immigration from farm to factory was slightly reminiscent of Factory Girls (whose author, I learned in the acknowledgements is Hessler's wife), but on the whole, Country Driving was a look at lighter and funnier side of life in China.

Five stars for those who love travel writing and tales of the wider world.