by Alexander McCall Smith, 2006
Beautiful, beautiful book! Mma Ramotswe’s cases include a young chef who catches her boss stealing food for her husband and then is accused of blackmailing the boss. Mma Ramotswe discovers the person blackmailing the boss is Aunty Emang, a Dear Abby-type person who ends up being a tiny, purely evil person. “Her visitor’s small face, with its darting, slightly hooded eyes, was impassive, but there was something in the eyes which disturbed her. Evil, she thought. That is what I see. Evil.”
Mr. JLB Matekoni buys a new chair. All the chairs in Zebra Drive are out of shape. (“I cannot find a comfortable position in any of the chairs in Zebra Drive. I don’t know what has happened to them. They are full of lumps and springs.”)
Phuti Radiphuti, Mma Makutsi’s fiance, gets scared because Mma Makutsi says she is a feminist. He doesn’t show up for their dinner. Mma Makutsi salvages it by going to his furniture shop with Mr. JLB Matekoni and making a comment, “Men have so many important decisions to make, they need to have good chairs…”
Mma Ramotswe goes on a diet because too many comments from too many people. It’s like her light goes out. At the end, Mma Potokwane comes to visit with fruit cake and finds out she’s on a diet. “What will all the other traditionally built ladies think if they hear about this? How can you be so unkind?”
Mma Makutsi can’t resist a pair of blue shoes with red linings. She buys them (on layaway) and wears them but she walks funny because they hurt her feet so bad. She says she must break them in but she admits the next day, ‘”They are a bit small for me, Mma,” she confessed. “I think you were right. But I felt great happiness when I wore them, and I shall always remember that. They are such beautiful shoes.”
‘Mma Ramotswe laughed. “Well that’s the important thing, isn’t it, Mma? To feel happiness, and then to remember it.”‘
There was a mystery about a doctor prescribing blood pressure pills, charging for expensive ones but giving generic.
And one other mystery about a fear at Mokolodi Game Preserve. Mr. Polopetsi goes there with Mma Ramotswe. He decides to take things in his own hands and goes back at night and steals the bird that people are superstitious about and which was causing the fear – a ground horn bill – it was brought there to recover from a broken wing and leg, but they bring death – so people were afraid. He steals the bird at night, puts it in a box, leaves it in the hot sun. Shows to Mma Ramotswe – it is dead. She and Mma Makutsi bury it under the acacia tree at the garage. “Mma Ramotswe nodded to Mma Makutsi, and together they walked back to the garage, barefoot, in simplicity, as their mothers and grandmothers had walked before them across the land that meant so much to them, and which was the resting place of us all-of people, of animals, of birds.”
This is the ending – after eating fruitcake on her verandah with Mma Potokwane: “Will you go back to your village one day?” she asked Mma Ramotswe. And Mma Ramotswe replied, “I shall go back. Yes, one of these days, I shall go back.”
‘And in her mind’s eye she saw the winding paths of Mochudi, and the cattle pens and the small walled-off plot of ground where a modest stone bore the inscription Obed Ramotswe. And beside the stone there were wild flowers growing, small flowers of such beauty and perfection that they broke the heart. They broke the heart.’