Travel Light, Move Fast
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4.4 • 33 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From bestselling author Alexandra Fuller, the utterly original story of her father, Tim Fuller, and a deeply felt tribute to a life well lived
Six months before he died in Budapest, Tim Fuller turned to his daughter: “Let me tell you the secret to life right now, in case I suddenly give up the ghost." Then he lit his pipe and stroked his dog Harry’s head. Harry put his paw on Dad’s lap and they sat there, the two of them, one man and his dog, keepers to the secret of life. “Well?” she said. “Nothing comes to mind, quite honestly, Bobo,” he said, with some surprise. “Now that I think about it, maybe there isn’t a secret to life. It’s just what it is, right under your nose. What do you think, Harry?” Harry gave Dad a look of utter agreement. He was a very superior dog. “Well, there you have it,” Dad said.
After her father’s sudden death, Alexandra Fuller realizes that if she is going to weather his loss, she will need to become the parts of him she misses most. So begins Travel Light, Move Fast, the unforgettable story of Tim Fuller, a self-exiled black sheep who moved to Africa to fight in the Rhodesian Bush War before settling as a banana farmer in Zambia. A man who preferred chaos to predictability, to revel in promise rather than wallow in regret, and who was more afraid of becoming bored than of getting lost, he taught his daughters to live as if everything needed to happen all together, all at once—or not at all. Now, in the wake of his death, Fuller internalizes his lessons with clear eyes and celebrates a man who swallowed life whole.
A master of time and memory, Fuller moves seamlessly between the days and months following her father’s death, as she and her mother return to his farm with his ashes and contend with his overwhelming absence, and her childhood spent running after him in southern and central Africa. Writing with reverent irreverence of the rollicking grand misadventures of her mother and father, bursting with pandemonium and tragedy, Fuller takes their insatiable appetite for life to heart. Here, in Fuller’s Africa, is a story of joy, resilience, and vitality, from one of our finest writers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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 fianc , 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.
Customer Reviews
Recommend!
The authors books are always engaging and witty. They make the reader feel as though they are living in the moment with her. This book was heartbreaking, and full of moments that made me wish this wasn’t real life, but a work of fiction.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has gone through a loss, or who has enjoyed Ms Fullers other books.