Books
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Alexandra Fuller Anyone familiar with Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Fuller’s 2001 account of childhood during Rhodesia’s bloody civil war, will immediately recognize in this new memoir her masterful ability to write about a person’s ties to home and her obsessive deconstruction of her larger-than-life parents. Those parents, and her African upbringing, are at the core of Leaving Before the Rains Come (Penguin, $26.95), this time used as a lens through which to assess the collapse of her marriage. Unlike other stories of divorce, this one cleaves profoundly to place-with Africa standing in for her and America for her husband. “Domestically,” she writes, “our two cultures had come into opposition like participants in a nominally friendly sports competition and clashed more aggressively than was necessary.” Fuller’s preoccupation with her own story, her own background, her own dogged romanticizing of her Rhodesian identity at times threatens to overshadow the topic at hand. Rains sometimes feels like an extended arm of her earlier work. Yet because that prior material is so intensely rich, and so obviously the true love of her life, it’s always a pleasure to read, or reread as the case may be. And while that diverting pull never releases, she gradually eases us into the narrative of her marriage and of motherhood-and we realize it could never have been told without those powerful ties to her heritage. Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., 386-4636, spl.org. Free. 7 p.m. Nicole Sprinkle Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., Seattle, WA 98104 Free Thursday, February 5, 2015, 7pm
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Nick Hornby If you’ve seen Wild, you’ll know that the English novelist Hornby (About a Boy, High Fidelity) has become an expert adapter of what once used to be called women’s stories. Perhaps appropriately then, his new Funny Girl (Riverhead, $29.75) follows a provincial beauty queen through her meteoric early success as a sitcom star of the mid-’60s. Swiftly renamed Sophie Straw, our plucky heroine is a bit like Georgy Girl: a single girl arrived in London at a time when single girls were suddenly presented with a whole new menu of freedoms. And more, Sophie becomes on TV an emblem for newly outspoken, emancipated single girls who are colliding with the old notions of class and gender roles. Yet she’s a careerist, happiest when working, and determined to succeed on the Beeb. I didn’t realize until reading the endnotes to Hornby’s happy, humorous novel how many real-life TV industry references and shows he’d interpolated into the plot. In a sense, Funny Girl is his imagining of the backstage intrigues and affairs of an imaginary sitcom during the era when he grew up, glued to the box. It is, like his prior novels, a warmly affirmative affair, with no villains or serious setbacks. And, Hollywood take note, it’ll offer a plum role to an actress who’d look great in vintage Carnaby Street fashions and knows how to sell a joke. Carey Mulligan had her turn in An Education (adapted by Hornby), so I’ll cast my vote for Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything). But who will play Terence Stamp for the Terence Stamp cameo? Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave., 652-4255, townhallseattle.org. $35-$40. 7:30 p.m. Brian Miller Town Hall Seattle, 1119 8th AvenueSeattle, WA 98101 $35-$40 Sunday, February 8, 2015, 7:30pm
Seattle Poetry Slam Local poets share their verse and spoken word compositions. 21 and over. Rebar, 1114 Howell StreetSeattle, WA $5 Tuesday, February 10, 2015, 8 – 11:30pm
Seattle Poetry Slam Local poets share their verse and spoken word compositions. 21 and over. Rebar, 1114 Howell StreetSeattle, WA $5 Tuesday, February 17, 2015, 8 – 11:30pm
Seattle Poetry Slam Local poets share their verse and spoken word compositions. 21 and over. Rebar, 1114 Howell StreetSeattle, WA $5 Tuesday, February 24, 2015, 8 – 11:30pm
Seattle Poetry Slam Local poets share their verse and spoken word compositions. 21 and over. Rebar, 1114 Howell StreetSeattle, WA $5 Tuesday, March 3, 2015, 8 – 11:30pm
