Don’t let’s go to the dogs tonight - Alexandra Fuller

In Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller remembers her African childhood with candor and sensitivity. Though it is a diary of an unruly life in an often inhospitable place, it is suffused with Fuller’s endearing ability to find laughter, even when there is little to celebrate. Fuller’s debut is unsentimental and unflinching but always captivating. In wry and sometimes hilarious prose, she stares down disaster and looks back with rage and love at the life of an extraordinary family in an extraordinary time dealing with alcoholism, mental illness and bereavement.

The dialog is beautiful:
Mum has been diagnosed with manic depression. She says. 'All of us are mad,' and then adds, smiling, 'but I am the only one with a certificate to prove it.'