A few years ago I had a bad bout of pneumonia which put me in the hospital for four days. For weeks afterwards I had a hard time reading anything that required concentration. A friend dropped me off a bag of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books and those I could manage. Alexander McCall Smith has written this series and a couple of others set in Scotland but I’ve never been able to get into those. But this series, set in Botswana and focusing on Mma Ramotswe, a traditionally built woman, and her co-director Mma Makutsi are quite lovely. Lately feeling like my soul was aching from endless terrible news of family separations on the American border and indigenous children with boils all over their bodies caused by contaminated water I decided I needed something gentle so I read #17 in the series, Precious and Grace.
These books are not gripping murder mysteries and there is no complicated discussion of justice or redemption. Generally people bring more quotidian mysteries to the #1 Ladies’ Detective agency for their solving. And there are no car chases and rarely police involved. Mostly they are slow meandering novels about the relationships between the two women at the heart of the agency, their husbands and children, and the others who are connected to them. Each novel involves at least one visit by Mma Ramotswe to her friend Mma Potokwane at her orphanage where they always share tea and fruit cake. There are comments about the new technology in cars (Mma Ramotswe’s husband owns a garage located next to the agency) but there are few clues about when the novels are set. Nelson Mandela is frequently mentioned as a hero but I don’t remember that it is every said that he is “late” so that doesn’t help date them. There are frequent discussions of how terrible it is that things are not the way they used to be but no explicit discussion of AIDS or political conflict. Drought is a constant problem but there is nothing said either about climate change.
Now that my head is less foggy I find myself wondering what people in Botswana think of these books or what someone discussing colonization or race would say about them. But mostly I just enjoy spending time with these people. They are kind and gentle and good hearted. I don’t even really worry about paying too much attention to who did what. It is enough to sit on the veranda with them and enjoy the quiet of an evening. In this book Mma Ramotswe and her husband have a conversation about whether dogs have souls (they do) and then she asks him whether our souls grow as we get older. “Yes,” he said. “Our souls get wider. They grow like the branches of a tree–growing outwards. And more birds come and make their homes in these branches. And sing a bit more.” This is theology I can live with.
Book ten was another audio book by Andrea Camilleri, Game of Mirrors. It was okay.
60 Before 60 