The Woman Who Walked In Sunshine

Several years ago the BBC and HBO co-produced a short-lived television series based on the #1 Ladies Detective Agency series. If your impression of those books and the characters featured in them was colored by watching TV, please forget everything you saw and read the books themselves. There are few examples anywhere in adult literature that can match the charm and insight that Alexander McCall Smith brings to these lovely little books.

The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine is the sixteenth novel in the series, and its by no means the best. But its as good a place as any to gain entry to the unforgettable world of Mma Precious Ramotswe, the endlessly wise proprietor of the agency; Mma Grace Makutsi, her exasperating sidekick; Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, the best mechanic in all Botswana and owner of the Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors repair shop; and the priceless recurring secondary characters in the ensemble.
Crime takes a holiday

Almost invariably, detective fiction is about crime and the brave and clever investigators who bring malefactors to justice, often risking their lives in the process. But dont expect any of that from the #1 Ladies Detective Agency. The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine and its predecessors in the series are all about Botswana, its culture, its history, and its commanding natural setting. More often than not, the crime that the agency is hired to solve turns out to be a false rumor, a family squabble, or one of the frequent shenanigans of Violet Sephotho, the scheming young woman who is the sworn enemy of Mma Makutsi and the bane of the agency.
The home of the famous lady detectives

Just in case you cant place Botswana on the globe, look for the huge chunk of territory just north of the nation of South Africa midway between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Once upon a time it was a British protectorate called Bechuanaland. The country gained its independence in 1966. Unlike so many of its neighbors, Botswana has been remarkably peaceful and a paragon of democracy singular accomplishments that are celebrated in the #1 Ladies Detective series.
About the author

Alexander McCall Smith taught medical law for many years at the celebrated University of Edinburgh. He is remarkably prolific writer, the author of several additional series of novels, five series of childrens books, and thirteen books of nonfiction. You might wonder when he sleeps. I do.

This is another if Smith’s wonderful and touching series about the #1 Ladies Detective Agency and its owner, Precious Ramotswe. There is a sly humor here and I am always impressed with the patient and giving nature of Mma Ramotswe and her compatriots. If this is truly how Botswana feels, it is a place I would love to visit. The characters are not like any I have ever met but Precious gives everyone the benefit of her wisdom and charity. She is insightful and seems naive without seeming stupid and although each of these stories stands alone very well, it is wonderful to start at the beginning and meet each of the main characters in the first books and get to know them all better and better as the series progresses. These are quick reads, but I always try to make them last as long as I can because I love them so. You’ll end up smiling at the end of each and every book and this is no exception.

My life is made better by Alexander McCall Smith. Although I love all his books, this series is my favorite. When I read these books I am transported to the kinder, gentler, more polite world of Precious Ramotswe. Sure there is terrible poverty, hunger and disease in Africa (as well as the rest of the world) and perhaps Mr. McCall Smith puts rose colored glasses on this world, but he alludes to the issues and is sensitive to them. However, the point of this series is not to bring awareness to Africa’s issues. To me, it is a love letter to a place he knows and loves and in my humble opinion we are all better for reading it. I will anxiously await each installment of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series and devour them practically the moment they come out and I hope it never ends!

Time for another visit with my friend Precious Ramotswe. Time spent with her always makes me feel as if I am walking in sunshine.

Mma Ramotswe/Alexander McCall Smith has a particularly generous and benevolent view of human nature. Slow to condemn even the most seemingly egregious behavior, Precious always looks for that kernel of goodness in every human being with whom she comes in contact. This is remarkable because she is the proprietor of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency in Botswana – the only detective agency in Botswana – and that profession often brings her in contact with some rather shady characters.

Precious Ramotswe has never had a holiday, but in The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine, the people who love her are conspiring to convince her that it is time she took one. Chief among the conspirators is her assistant Grace Makutsi who is eager to be in sole charge of the detective agency while Precious is away.

Mma Ramotswe is unconvinced that she needs a holiday. She’s not sure what she would do on one, but inevitably she is persuaded and begins a two-week vacation.

It’s more of a staycation. She spends her time at home tidying her cupboards and closets, but that only takes her so far and soon she is bored.

On a shopping trip in town, she has an encounter with a young boy who tries to get her to pay him protection money to guard her van. She refuses and when she comes out she finds that her beloved tiny white van has a new and ugly scratch on its side. She confronts the little boy and dresses him down, threatening to spank him, but soon her heart is overflowing with sympathy as she realizes the young child is on his own and only trying to survive. Anyone who knows Precious can guess how this is going to end.

Moreover, things seem to be heating up at the detective agency in her absence. A part-timer who had been hired to help out while she was on holiday contacts Mma Ramotswe and tells her that Mma Makutsi has assigned him a case that has overwhelmed him and he doesn’t know where to turn next. Of course, Precious makes plans to help him out, suspecting that Grace may have bungled things. Perhaps she should have had more faith in her training of her assistant.

These books are deceptively simple. While reading, one feels that they are just talk, talk, talk, and nothing is really happening. Then at the end you look back and realize that actually quite a bit of consequence happened.

It’s great fun to tootle around the potholed roads of Botswana with Mma Ramotswe in her little white van, listening to her ruminations on human nature, the beauty of the landscape, Nature’s gifts, the history of her country, and her memories of her beloved daddy and growing up on his farm. One comes to the end of such a trip with a much lighter and hopeful and more peaceful view of the world. It’s a wonderful antidote to some of the darker material I’ve been reading lately.

Not as good as the earlier novels. The story lines have moved away from detective work to a personal level where the detective work is definitely secondary. It’s almost as though the author has run out of steam, lacks the imagination that was shown in the books earlier in the series and is just writing them with little thought about the concept. Now the novels as a shadow of their former selves.