Travel Light, Move Fast

Starred review from September 2, 2019
Grieving the loss of her father, Fuller (Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight) revisits her tumultuous upbringing “farming in a war zone” during the Rhodesian Bush War in the 1970s through the present day in this arresting memoir. The book opens in 2015 Budapest, where she sits vigil over her father, Tim, in a hospital ICU for 12 days, recalling how his restlessness kept his young family moving from one remote location to another, before he dies. Madcap events involving oddball characters play out as Fuller plans for his cremation and her mother’s return to their farm in Zambia. Four months after Tim’s death, the family gathers to scatter his ashes, and Fuller introduces her fiancé, an American artist she lives with in Wyoming. Old wounds reopen over her “Awful Books”—bestselling memoirs she’s written about the family—and in the aftermath she’s estranged from her sister, her writing stalls, and her engagement breaks off. Just before book’s end, an unforeseen death in July 2018 engulfs her in pain that “would have no end, it would have no shape, it would shape me.” Darkly comic dialogue deepens Fuller’s piercing narrative, yet Tim’s timeless wisdom strikes the most resonant note: “It’ll be all right in the end; if it isn’t all right, it isn’t the end.” Beautifully crafted, Fuller’s moving memoir flows with precision and compassion.