Pedestrian View

OK, so everyone else was reading this eight years ago.  It’s true, my reading list is behind the curve.  I get around to the hot books somewhere between eight and forty years after my sister’s book club.  My reading list is determined more by what I trip over than what I intentionally set out to read.

That aside, Alexander McCall Smith’s tale of Mma Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective, lived up to all expectations and didn’t suffer for the wait.  I’ve been hearing about this series for years, and sometimes that buildup can be deadly, but not so here.  There’s a beautiful simplicity and directness about Mma Ramotswe’s character.  The book is rather like a bunch of short stories, but in the end there’s one major case that unifies the novel, and in the process, we get a very whistful portrait of Botswana, and Africa in a general.  It has the sweetness of The Gods Must be Crazy - also a Botswana tale - without all the white people getting in the way.  Of course, Smith is pretty darned white, but somehow he accomplishes a very non-Western feel.  I suppose a real Setswana would write a very different novel (and probably has).

My favorite moments were when a snake climbs up into the engine compartment of her van, and when she doesn’t fire her receptionist even when there’s nothing for her to do and she’s losing money hand over fist, because what kind of detective agency doesn’t have a receptionist?

There’s also the sensible sexiness of large African women to jar our American ideals of beauty.  It all goes down very nice with a fresh mug of bush tea.