Blue Shoes and Happiness

The plot is a little thin, and there are a lot of new characters introduced all at once, without time to get a feel for each one. The children are almost totally absent from the book. I love this series, but I liked the first 6 books better.
The author seems to suggest certain ideas (typically through the characters), like that all women are heterosexual, should get married to a man, cook and clean, and aim to please men. Sometimes it seems like the author pokes fun at feminism by suggesting it’s some radical form of being mean to men or anti-men.
Although some of the ideas are just banter/thoughts of the characters, there seems to be a fairly common theme of women’s ideal lives consisting of marriage to men, pleasing men, stroking their male partners’ egos, being responsible for all domestic chores, etc.
I’m not sure how I feel about the (in my opinion) idea that a blood pressure of 160/90 is normal. The author may be making gentle jokes, but if you take the protagonist’s journey/conclusions seriously, it seems like being morbidly obese is suggested in the face of medical facts about how dangerous it is. It’s fine to joke about diets & strokes, but it isn’t actually funny if you or someone you care about throws health advice out the window & suffers or dies from obesity/related conditions. I have family who have blood pressures in the range discussed in the book (which also seems to poke fun at blood pressure medication), and they have horrible health problems. If they read this and thought ignored medical advice because cake is nice, they’d die.
Yes, this is fiction, the author isn’t explicitly telling people to be unhealthy, but the ideas in this book seem to head in directions I’m not fully comfortable with.
The male characters who are good people seem to need the women to fall all over them to please them, even when the men are in the wrong/made a mistake. Mma Ramotswe submits to her fianc/husband adopting children (whom she’s expected to care for) unannounced because he’s a good man. Mma Makutsi has to bend over backwards for saying she’s a feminist because her fianc is also a good man. There are good men everywhere, but why is it the women’s job to always accommodate good men who made decisions without consulting them or made mistakes?
Bottom line is that if you like the series, you’ll probably like this one, but it wasn’t my favorite.

I discovered this series only recently and I can understand why, as I found out, it is such a world-wide success and why Mma Ramotswe has become such an icon. It is not great, ponderous literature — it is much more than that! The plots are simple but well done; the writing very pleasant. However, in my opinion neither plot nor style, perfectly unobjectionable as they are, are these books’ main attraction. The characters are, and their interaction. The people come to life all the time: wise, funny, loyal, weak — completely human. There are great life lessons to be learned in these apparently simple books, from love for humanity, to the need for forgiveness and respect. Objects, and the land, also play an important and unforgettable role. I barely knew where to find Botswana on the world map before, and now it is so vivid in my mind as if I lived there for ever. One warmly given suggestion: read these books chronologically. You will enjoy them even if your read them in an hapazard order, but if you read them as they were written you will be drawn even more into this jewel of a world.

Usually when an author continues with a series that focuses on the same characters, the storyline becomes stale and predictable. This is quite the opposite for Alexander McCall Smith. He is constantly introducing the reader to an array of interesting characters based on the activities in the Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors and the adjacent detective agency. His character development is simple but very engaging. Added to this is his continual weaving of the cultural norms of the Botswana people into the narrative. Without mentioning the aids epidemic, he manages to give us a glimpse of how, at the personal level, the impact it is having on families in Africa. He gives much discourse to the “old” Botswana ways and the modern Botswana in such a way that it is hard for the reader not to make similar comparison in their own culture. I was also impressed with the ongoing dialogue emphasizing that communication between the sexes is a universal issue. Consider the confusion created when Puthi Radiputhi missed dinner at Mma Makutsi’s house and how the whole misunderstanding was resolved in a furniture store – that was priceless.

I bought the audiobook this time because I wanted to hear the correct pronunciations of the various names and places but I got so much more. The narrator does an excellent job of conveying various inflections for the characters giving the oratory a depth and texture that I had not otherwise experienced with the other books in the series. Both the book and the audio book are truly exceptional and I hope there will be more in this series from Mr. McCall Smith in the future.

The factor that pulls this book up from a four star read to a five star listen is the superb narration of actress, Adjoa Andoh. She is absolutely wonderful, and managed to suck me in to the whole atmosphere of Botswana and the characters from her very firs utterance.

The story lines are gentle and easy to follow. There is nothing to challenge the reader, so it is a relaxing read. The characters interact well, but I liked them all rather than loved any of them.

I am in the process of writing a fictional novel about Botswana myself, and listening to, and reading, the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series really puts me in the right mood for writing. I must be very careful, though, not to steal any of Alexander McCall Smith’s ideas and cliches. I just love the continuous reference to Mma Ramotswe as a “traditionally built woman,” and the way that the author rounds off the saga of her diet is most satisfactory.

Alexander McCall Smith is a great writer – very interesting and entertaining to listen to this audio book

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