About book In The Company Of Cheerful Ladies (2005)
Precious Ramotswe, Botwana's No.1 Lady Detective, is usually concerned with other people's problems and mishaps. She handles these with aplomb, common sense and, sometimes a little pressure... Her usual cheerfulness is rarely put to the test. Yet, when it comes to difficulties in her own life, she is not so well prepared. She has, after all, a position to maintain and this limits her options. Mma Makutsi is her junior in the agency, which makes her unsuitable as a confidante. And Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, she feels, has enough on his plate already to be burdened with more. On one of her regular visits with Mma Potokwani, the pushy matron of the orphan farm to "just sit and talk", she is advised of the reappearance of somebody from her past. Calamity looms for her and her new marriage.This latest, sixth, instalment of the delightful series, brings us more of life's ups and downs of the small community of Precious' family and friends. Charlie, the young apprentice, seems to be getting into trouble. A minor accident with the tiny white van brings a surprisingly interesting new character into the circle, Mr Polopetsi. He turns out to be quite an asset, quietly working away, and even assisting Mma Ramotswe with her private problems. The white van breaks down, then disappears, leaving Mma Ramotswe in disarray. In the meantime, Mma Makutsi moves into new circles, and takes exploratory steps towards a new life - literally with new shoes.McCall Smith has a unique style that wraps around the reader like a comforting blanket. We follow the flow and participate in the daily routines and any disruptions of them. McCall Smith's main subject of interest of this as it was in his previous instalments, are the people. The surroundings are beautifully described as a backdrop. With each episode we learn more about the main characters. New aspects are revealed about their personalities that we did not see before. We think we can imagine what might happen next but then, life has its own ways to proceed, often with unexpected results. When, please, is the next instalment?
Not my favorite in this series. Some of the story lines were good, but if you took out all the repetitions within this one book itself, you could probably lose a couple chapters, and if you took out passages that are essentially repeats from other books in the series you could cut this book in half. It just starts to feel like filler to me, I'd rather the words were spent more on story and less on repeated reflections. Plus I felt like both Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi are becoming more inflexible in their judgements of other people but especially each other. Being privy to their unspoken criticisms of each other is making both of them seem kind of mean-spirited at times. It's not balanced with a lot of positive reflections, so I was left feeling like their friendship is slowly deteriorating (probably this feeling has been growing in me over the last few books). Mma Makutsi seems to be heading in a rather materialistic and selfish direction, while Mma Ramotswe seems more and more critical of just about everyone except the few people who fit in with her ideals of sticking to "the old Botswana morality", which I think I've heard just about enough of by this point. I still find it interesting on one level to learn about this culture's old world code of ethics, but the way it's hammered in every book over and over, I'm starting to feel like a restless teenager whose elders keep saying, "You know when I was your age, we respected our elders..." (blah blah blah) I'm taking a break before reading the next book to see if some distance helps.
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This is what I wrote about the book at my blog after finishing it a few years ago:I do love to read about Precious Ramotswe, the No. 1 Lady Detective of Botswana! So when book six arrived I had to have it ;) Alexander McCall Smith tells his story with warmth and humor. I laugh out load at several occasions and love the way he makes me feel like I’m a little bit there together with them all. Even though I never been to Botswana my self.This time Mma Ramotswe have to solve several cases; one of them being why one of the apprentice, who work in the Garage of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni; Mma Ramotswe’s husband, suddenly seems to have too much money on his hand and drives away in a Mercedes. And when Mma Ramotswe is too preoccupied with her own thoughts and hits a man on a bike, with her tiny white wan, the man finally gets a job after searching for months. Finally the love life of her assistant Mma Makusi gets a spark from the most unexpected place!*Go read it now!!* :D And now I've seen that there is a book 7 and 8 - I'm off to the store!!
—Lime
Since so many people are writing reviews about these wonderful books and discussing the plot, I think I will talk about Africa and especially the way Mma Ramotswe feels about her home and her people. Reading these books has given me the same feeling I got from the beginning of Out of Africa and Cry, the Beloved Country. There is such a deep love of the land in these characters and I find myself wanting to be there with them. I also find myself remembering how I felt in Mississippi in the days of my childhood. There seemed no better place to be. Life was filled with troubles, but there was always the land and free and easy friendships to help me along. I think that may be what we all are relating to, or at least it is to me. I also am reminded of a time in our lives where we were not so mobile and people lived in areas where we weren't homogenized. We had to learn to not only get along with some of the more unique and prickly members of our community, but often come to value them. I feel like my life was made much richer by relating to a local alcoholic who got saved at least twice a year, or the man who named all his sons after himself and called them each by nicknames to keep them straight. (I'm not kidding. There were four and they all had the same names.) We visited with people of varying ages and classes and our lives were made richer in a way that watching television in the evening never could. Maybe that is why these books appeal. I'm tired of Hollywood's two dimensional characters and long for what Mma Precious Ramotswe has.
—Anne Hawn Smith
I don't know whether the books are getting better as the series continues, or if I have simply slid into the comfort zone they create for me, with all their repetition and rambling and familiarity, but it seems to me that they are becoming more thematically focused and cohesive. This book's intertwining plots center on appearance and reality, on expectations and prejudgment and how they may obscure the truth: from the book's beginning, where Mma Ramotswe, trying to stop a crime, is taken for a criminal, to the end, where people prove their worth despite their unprepossessing appearances - and vice versa.
—Isis
