Book Review: Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This hauntingly beautiful and often humorous memoir about the author's Rhodesian childhood perfectly embodies that age-old mantra of our writing teachers, show, don't tell! Fuller's prose "shows" us a clear, unsentimental picture of Africa in the latter half of the twentieth century. It shows us everything: the striking beauty of the terrain, the landmines, the poverty, the violence, the vestiges of colonial life. She shows us the eccentricities of her parents, farmers whose combination of ethnocentrism and heartfelt humanitarianism are sure to befuddle we 21st century American readers with our predilection for putting people into distinct categories. She shows us this with stunning, evocative prose. And she doesn't tell us things. She doesn't politicize in either direction. She doesn't allow her narrative to be perforated with a million post-colonial caveats, admonitions and qualifications. She tells us neither that her parents were racist nor that they were saints. She doesn't editorialize about the legitimacy of her parents' love for Africa, or the fact that they considered it their rightful home. She simply shows us what her life was like in a way that makes a girl from a suburb of Los Angeles feel as though she were really there.

The fact that Alexandra Fuller chooses "showing" over "telling" has led some readers to call this book "Anti-African" and others to call it "detached." Readers will take from it what they will, but I found it to be neither of these things. I found a memoir that renders a unique life in a unique time and place, with pathos, humor and eloquence.



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Book Review: Reedeeming Love

Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


The biblical story of Hosea and his self-sacrificial and utterly incomprehensible pursuit of the harlot Gomer is dramatically retold in this romance novel, set in the California gold rush era. The wonderful things I’ve heard about this book, paired with the fact that I’m currently attempting a personal study through the Old Testament book of Hosea, led me to pick this one up and experience it myself. The book of Hosea is a favorite of mine; I love how it speaks volumes of God’s all-consuming and regenerating love for an undeserving people, I love how it preaches the Gospel, and I love the effect that its compelling and frightening poetry has on me. It’s hard for a 21st century novel marketed as “Christian romance” to live up to that.



I picked this book up while on vacation at the beach – it seemed like a perfect beach read – but it didn’t end up water-logged and sunscreen-stained like other beach reads I’ve read and enjoyed in the past. I finished it several weeks after my vacation came to a close, and it remains in pretty good condition. That’s not a good sign.



While I deeply appreciate the author’s mission in writing the novel and found that there were some compelling moments, the novel as a whole left me desiring more. The California gold rush setting held such potential, but from beginning to end, it remained a static elementary-school-production backdrop to the plot–not a living, breathing component of the story. The characters’ dialogue was equally stilted, like you plucked some youngsters from MTV’s “Teen Mom,” and dropped them right into the 19th century – very jarring. Overall, the novel doesn’t score very high in the verisimilitude department.



I realize I have yet to publish a novel that sells over a million copies, so take these comments with a grain of salt. The novel’s two leading characters are Michael Hosea, a recreation of the Old Testament prophet Hosea, and Angel/Sarah/Mara/Amanda/Tirzah, who is supposed to be Gomer. I felt like the parallel between the newly minted characters and the Old Testament ones is too direct, thus producing characterization that is very awkward. Rivers casts Angel as a prostitute, which makes sense, given Gomer’s actions in the Bible, but Michael Hosea is cast as a literal prophet in the same way that Old Testament Hosea was – someone who is uniquely ordained to hear direct, spoken communications from God. Throughout the novel, Michael Hosea hears God’s voice audibly, like it’s just no big deal, and his prophethood is never really addressed or fleshed-out in the novel. Readers are just supposed to accept that this random dude from the 19th century is amazingly singled out in this way. While I would never want put restrictions on what God can do, that trait just didn’t translate well from the Old Testament world to the time and place of Francine Rivers’ novel. That, combined with the fact that Michael Hosea pretty much coerces young Angel to be his bride, makes him much more reminiscent of Warren Jeffs than the gracious and loving triune God of the Bible. A good deal was lost in translation.



If the goal of this novel is to communicate to 21st century readers the nature of God’s tenacious and unmerited love for undeserving sinners, then Rivers’ decision to make Angel (Gomer) the protagonist of the novel and the one whose thought processes are most transparent to the reader is also somewhat problematic. From the time she was an innocent child, Angel is subjected to various forms of neglect and sexual abuse by the men in her life. She is much more of a victim of sin than a perpetrator of sin. Even her most egregious violations are made somewhat understandable, due to the horrific abuses she has suffered. Given that her past and her emotions are on display, only a cold-hearted reader could not sympathize with her throughout the novel, even when she repeatedly does what she ought not do. This is a very different picture from the one we get of Gomer, and God’s people by extension, in the book of Hosea. God’s love for his people is so amazing because they have no good reason to reject it. They have forgotten the ways in which God has mercifully delivered them in the past. Unlike Angel, they have known and savored the goodness of God, they have enjoyed the benefits of a gracious and loving father. Their rebellion, our rebellion, against God is so irrational, so unjustified. I don’t think we’re meant to look at Gomer and say, “Boy, she’s had it rough. No wonder she’s an unfaithful harlot!” When we look at Gomer, we see sin for the ugly mess that it is, and that serves to emphasize, by contrast, the amazing love of God, that he would pursue her in spite of that. In Redeeming Love, Michael’s faithfulness takes a backseat to Angel’s victimhood. The more the latter is emphasized, the more the former is diminished. And that seemed to undermine the whole point of the biblical story, thus lessening the power of the novel for me.







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