Leaving Before the Rains Come
Alexandra Fuller, 2015
Penguin Group (USA)
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781594205866
Summary
A child of the Rhodesian wars and daughter of two deeply complicated parents, Alexandra Fuller is no stranger to pain. But the disintegration of Fuller’s own marriage leaves her shattered.
Looking to pick up the pieces of her life, she finally confronts the tough questions about her past, about the American man she married, and about the family she left behind in Africa. A breathtaking achievement, Leaving Before the Rains Come is a memoir of such grace and intelligence, filled with such wit and courage, that it could only have been written by Alexandra Fuller.
Leaving Before the Rains Come begins with the dreadful first years of the American financial crisis when Fuller’s delicate balance—between American pragmatism and African fatalism, the linchpin of her unorthodox marriage—irrevocably fails. Recalling her unusual courtship in Zambia—elephant attacks on the first date, sick with malaria on the wedding day—Fuller struggles to understand her younger self as she overcomes her current misfortunes.
Fuller soon realizes what is missing from her life is something that was always there: the brash and uncompromising ways of her father, the man who warned his daughter that "the problem with most people is that they want to be alive for as long as possible without having any idea whatsoever how to live." Fuller’s father—"Tim Fuller of No Fixed Abode" as he first introduced himself to his future wife—was a man who regretted nothing and wanted less, even after fighting harder and losing more than most men could bear.
Leaving Before the Rains Come showcases Fuller at the peak of her abilities, threading panoramic vistas with her deepest revelations as a fully grown woman and mother. Fuller reveals how, after spending a lifetime fearfully waiting for someone to show up and save her, she discovered that, in the end, we all simply have to save ourselves.
An unforgettable book, Leaving Before the Rains Come is a story of sorrow grounded in the tragic grandeur and rueful joy only to be found in Fuller’s Africa. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—March 29, 1969
• Where—Glossop, Derbyshire, UK
• Raised—Central Africa
• Education—B. A., Acadia University, Nova Scotia, Canada
• Awards—Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize; Lettre Ulysses Award
• Currently—lives in Wilson, Wyoming
Alexandra Fuller is an author who was raised in Central Africa and currently lives in the U.S. state of Wyoming. She was born in the town of Glossop, England, but moved with her family to Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) in 1972 and was educated at boarding schools in Mutare and Harare.
Fuller received a B.A. from Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada (receiving an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the same institution in 2007). She met her American husband, Charlie Ross, in Zambia, where he was running a rafting business for tourists. In 1994, they moved to his home state of Wyoming but eventually divorced in 2012. They have three children. She currently spends much of her time in a yurt near Jackson, Wyoming.
Her first book, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, a memoir of her childhood in Africa, won the 2002 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize. It was a New York Times Notable Book for 2002 and a finalist for the Guardian's First Book Award.
Scribbling the Cat, her second book, was released in 2004. An unflinching account of the repercussions of the Rhodesian Bush War, it won the Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage in 2005.
In her third book, The Legend of Colton H. Bryant, Fuller narrates the tragically short life of a Wyoming roughneck who, in 2006, fell to his death at the age of 25. He was working on an oil rig owned by Patterson–UTI Energy.
Her second memoir (and fourth book), Cocktail Hour Under The Tree of Forgetfulness, was published in 2011 and tells the story of her mother, Nicola Fuller.
Her 2015 memoir, Leaving Before the Rains Come, recounts the disintegration of her marriage.
Fuller's articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications including The New Yorker, National Geographic, Granta, New York Times, Guardian and Financial Times. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/26/2015.)
Book Reviews
Much of Leaving Before the Rains Come concerns itself with the familial histories of both Fuller and her husband (whose background, amazingly, almost equals Fuller’s in its extraordinariness). Consequently, the book is longer and more diverting than in a sense it ought to be, while at the same time the incompatibility of these two narratives...creates a sense of uneasiness at its core.... Fuller is far from depleted: This book perhaps marks the beginning of her journey toward an unassailable possession of mind, and toward a new kind of freedom.
Rachel Cusk - New York Times Book Review
I've loved Alexandra Fuller's other books, particularly Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, a rich, marvelous memoir brimming with details of her romantic Rhodesian upbringing, and Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness, which traced her mother's history. But Leaving Before the Rains Come, the story of her crumbling marriage, is even better than those two books, one of the gutsiest memoirs I've ever read. And the writing—oh my God, the writing. It's more than a little daunting to review a book so gorgeously wrought that you stop, time and again, just to marvel at the language (Grade A).
Entertainment Weekly
In her newest memoir, Fuller insightfully explores the contrasts between the different landscapes [of Africa and America's West] and their corresponding mind-sets.... [T]his book also attempts to tackle...a sad, drawn-out divorce.... [T]he rich narration of Fuller’s upbringing, sensibility, and loneliness make clear that she remains one of the most gifted and important memoirists of our time.
Publishers Weekly
In books like her award-winning debut, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Fuller gives us an indelible portrait of Africa as it has defined her personal life. Here she continues in that vein, detailing the breakup of her marriage to an American she met in Zambia, where he ran a rafting business.
Library Journal
Powerful, raw, and painful, Fuller’s writing is so immediate, so vivid that whether she’s describing the beauty of Zambia or the harrowing hours following a devastating accident, she leaves the reader breathless. Another not-to-be-missed entry from the gifted Fuller.
Booklist
[A] wry, forthright and captivating memoir. The focus is on the slow unraveling of her marriage to a man [Fuller] thought would save her from her family's madness and chaos.... [F]inancial pressures...and her own loneliness gradually took a toll.... To reclaim her life, she insisted on divorce.... Fuller's talent as a storyteller makes this memoir sing.
Kirkus Reviews
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