Behind every strong country, there are strong women
- Book: Morality for Beautiful Girls
- Location: Botswana
- Author: Alexander McCall Smith
Mma Ramotswe, proprietor of the No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, is worried. The agency isn’t making enough money to pay the bills AND her earnest assistant, Mma Makutsi, and Mma Ramotswe’s fiancé, Mr JLB Matekoni, seems to be neglecting his own well–respected business, the Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors Garage. Mma Ramotswe is used to solving other people’s problems, but what is she to do about her own?
This is the third of Alexander McCall Smith’s Botswana-based stories, and once again he gives us a wonderful sense of the place, and the character of its people, whilst drawing us in to the mysteries that Mma Ramotswe tries to solve. As she says to herself:
‘This is what I am called to do…I must help whomsoever asks for my help. That is my duty: to help other people with the problems in their lives.’
Three cases have presented themselves to the agency. A rich government official thinks his sister-in-law is trying to poison his brother to get at the family inheritance. A fashion mogul needs to choose Miss Glamorous Botswana – but also to make sure that the winner is worthy of representing his beloved country. A boy has appeared from the bush, unable to speak and acting more like an animal: no-one knows where he has come from nor what has happened to him.
This time, Mma Matsuki gets the chance to take on a case alone; whilst Mma Ramotswe goes undercover to ‘the lands’ to investigate the government official’s family, Mma Matsuki devises a questionnaire to determine which of the beauty show finalists will be a good ambassador for Botswana. Meanwhile, at the orphan farm, Mma Potokwani and Mma Ramotswe devise a way to help both the enigmatic bush boy and Mr JLB Matekoni.
Alexander McCall Smith has a deceptively simple way of writing. He seems to be telling a straightforward story, but the reader gradually becomes aware of the deep human feeling behind the words. In his world, almost everyone is fundamentally good, even those whose actions may not appear so. Mma Ramotswe seeks to understand people, to help them see where they may have gone wrong. She does not deal with violent crime, but the problems her clients – and her family and friends – bring to her are just as important to them, and just as deserving of her care.
A particularly pleasing aspect of this book is the development of Mma Matsuki as a major character. She is clever, resourceful and hardworking, and now, given greater responsibility, she really shines. She has neither money nor beauty, but her endless enthusiasm, her kindness, and sharp wit gain our respect, and our love. Meanwhile, Precious Ramotswe herself, a strong woman whose moral code informs her daily life, now shows her softer side as she worries about Mr JLB Matekoni, ponders the early death of her mother, and remembers the pride her much-missed father took in his own cattle.
The image most of us have of Africa is often not a good one: famine, civil unrest, war, AIDs. McCall Smith does not ignore these issues – AIDs features in this book, and there are references to past famines, and to the rains that must come to feed the country – but he shows us a very different side of Botswana, the country in which he grew up. Gentle people who love the land and care for their cattle, polite people who still know how to treat one another with respect and dignity, a country of immense natural beauty, a country whose peaceful independence is a source of huge pride to all its citizens.
This is a story that will entertain, and also deeply move.
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