fter 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. In the wake of his death, Fuller internalizes his lessons with clear eyes and celebrates a man who swallowed life whole.
A word of advice. To fully appreciate Travel Light, Move Fast, the fourth volume of Alexandra Fuller’s lacerating portrait of her family, you need to start on Page 213. In an epilogue to the main tale, Fuller informs the reader that during the two years and three months after her father died, she lost everything she assumed she’d love forever ... In Travel Light, Move Fast, the author draws [her father] to center stage — and shows how essential his love and lightheartedness were to their survival ... In the grief-filled days that lay ahead, his family would remember his memorial service and, amid the tears, would laugh out loud. As Fuller shows in this beautifully written and deeply loving portrait, laughing and crying are such a huge part of life.
Fuller carefully picks away at the tangle of her grief by exploring her dad’s life, gliding between her own experience in the present and his raucous past Travel Light, Move Fast is a sensitive, meticulously wrought portrait of one family’s sometimes-challenging dynamics, set against an unforgiving African backdrop. Fuller’s beautiful prose juxtaposes the grieving process with the lessons she learned from the man whose adventures shaped her.
Fuller is deeply saddened by her father dying so far from the land that he loved, but most of this gorgeously written reminiscence is comprised of vignettes from the beautiful life her vivacious parents shared together ... After four memoirs that chronicle, in whole or in part, Fuller and her family’s lives in Africa, her family remains endlessly fascinating and delightful companions for long-time readers and new ones alike. When Fuller reveals an even more devastating loss in the final pages, it’s a gut-punch that will leave readers aching for her. A gorgeously written tribute to a life well lived and the resilience of the human spirit in the face of unimaginable loss and grief.
