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Title: The Kalahari Typing School for Men : More from the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith ISBN: 0-375-42217-X Publisher: Pantheon Books Pub. Date: 29 April, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (39 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Three cheers for McCall Smith and his fabulous book!
Comment: Western writers usually enter Africa by way of a protagonist who belongs to their own culture (missionary, functionary, explorer, soldier, mail-order bride) and is venturing into unknown territory. So it is one of the mysteries --- and miracles --- of recent fiction that a Scotsman named Alexander McCall Smith should have created a character like Precious Ramotswe, the full-bodied, clear-headed, absolutely captivating investigator who inhabits all four of his Botswana novels: THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY, TEARS OF THE GIRAFFE, MORALITY FOR BEAUTIFUL GIRLS, and now, THE KALAHARI TYPING SCHOOL FOR MEN.
Mma Ramotswe (in traditional Botswana culture, honorifics are always used; it seems rude not to do so in the review as well) has had a tough life: married to an abusive jazz musician, she loses her baby and then her beloved father. But she finds her vocation: she sets up the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and is soon attracting clients. She also acquires a fiancé, garage owner Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, two orphans, and a sidekick, Mma Makutsi, who received a grade of 97 percent on her exams at the Botswana Secretarial College. You don't have to be familiar with the first three books to follow the action in KALAHARI --- McCall Smith is careful to supply context for the first-time reader --- but I think it's better to discover them in order. Not only do you gradually develop a sense of Mma Ramotswe and her life on Zebra Drive (yep, that's the name of her street), but you also become deeply fond of Botswana (this is important since, to the average Westerner, Africa is still a "dark" --- that is, unknown --- continent). These wise, charming books leave you feeling washed clean and peaceful, with an expanded sense of humanity.
Although KALAHARI and the other books are technically mysteries, plot is not the main thing here. There are interlocking events --- a man across town opens a new detective agency; Mma Makutsi starts a typing school for men; Mma Ramotswe solves a case or two --- but there is little real tension or suspense. What keeps you reading is the wonderful writing: pure, economical, funny, utterly lacking in condescension. The evocation of Botswana is often lyrical (its quiet roads, its ubiquitous cattle). Sometimes the stories seem fable-like, as if McCall Smith is telling them around a campfire in the deep African night. This impression is reinforced by the repetition of certain phrases. Mma Ramotswe has a "tiny white van" and is "traditionally built." She believes in "the old Botswana morality" --- a phrase that covers everything from knocking and calling out "Ko Ko" before you enter someone's house to the deeper sense of courtesy and integrity that is being overwhelmed by modern life.
It is one of the many ironies of this wonderful book that Mma Ramotswe and her cohorts, despite their professed yearning for traditional values, are actually the smartest, most progressive people around. Because they are authentic and honest and guided by common sense rather than greed or pride, they make phony modernists like the proprietor of the rival Satisfaction Guaranteed Detective Agency look like idiots (the scene in which Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi pay him a visit is priceless). Indeed, THE KALAHARI TYPING SCHOOL FOR MEN, more than the others in the series, is very much occupied with gender; it has a feminist streak a mile wide.
Consider the characters McCall Smith gives us: the entrepreneurial Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi; the imposing head of the orphan farm, Mma Potokwani, who wangles free products and services from everyone ("It would take a degree of courage that few possessed to turn [her] down"); Mma Tsolamosese, whose daughter has died of AIDS and who is caring for her doomed grandchild with dignity and compassion; and Mma Boko, who is head of a local branch of the Botswana Rural Women's Association but refuses to run for office because "all [men] do is talk about money and roads and things like that. ... We women have more important things to talk about."
With sly humor and wry tolerance, the novel captures that conspiratorial sense among women --- in any culture --- that men are not quite up to their standards (Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni being the exception, of course): "The trouble with men," muses Mma Ramotswe, "was that they went about with their eyes half closed for much of the time. ... That was why women were so good at tasks which required attention to the way people felt. Being a private detective, for example. ..." Or Mma Makutsi, commenting on the essays written by her typing-school students: "All of life seemed to be laid out before her: mothers, wives, football teams, ambitions at work, cherished motor cars; everything that men liked." And when Mma Ramotswe says her foster son is going through "a difficult patch," a friend replies dryly: "Boys do go through times like that. It can last for fifty years."
McCall Smith, it turns out, was born in what is now Zimbabwe (then called Southern Rhodesia) and taught law at the University of Botswana, but those facts alone hardly explain his astounding ability to enter the soul of a woman as well as the soul of Africa. He, like Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, must be one of the exceptions, a good man. He is certainly an imaginative and observant one. Somehow he manages to communicate the specific feel and spirit of Botswana while also creating characters that transcend the barriers of geography, culture, and gender.
McCall Smith is writing a fifth Precious Ramotswe book, according to his publisher, and has started a new series featuring another lady detective, Isabel Dalhousie (Scottish father, American mother). I can't wait.
--- Reviewed by Kathy Weissman
Rating: 4
Summary: Powerful view of African traditions
Comment: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency has problems--a new competitor run by a man has opened in town. And with Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni returning from his long bout with depression, there's the problem of how to pay Mma. Makutsi--who has served as assistant detective and also acting manager of Matekoni's garage. Still, although the competitor threatens to steal some of their business, Mma. Ramotswe has some detecting jobs to do--including finding the people a client wronged many years before and whether a husband is cheating on his wife. In the meantime, Mma. Makutsi comes up with a brilliant idea--a typing school for men--men who wouldn't be caught dead in a secretarial college like Mma. Makutsi attended, but who need keyboard skills for their jobs. It's an ideal solution to her money problems and also a convenient way for the single Makutsi to discover a man.
Author Alexander McCall Smith loves Africa, its traditional ways of life, and the ways that its people (at least the people of Botswana) treat one another. His No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, including THE KALAHARI TYPING SCHOOL FOR MEN are practically poetic in their praises of this traditional way of life. Mma. Ramotswe is the protagonist in these stories and the central pillar for tradition. Her detecting and the solutions to her clients problems flow from these African traditions (as interpreted by Smith) and prove heart-warming even in the midst of poverty and the AIDS crisis that has destroyed so much of Africa (AIDS is not mentioned by name in this novel but its impact is clear to see). Whether Smith's view of Africa has anything to do with the real continent is something I won't even attempt to decide, but it is certainly his view and his love for this Africa is obvious and compelling.
Smith's beautiful writing makes KALAHARI an enjoyable read that can be savored or swallowed in a gulp. The characters of Mma. Makutsi and Mma. Ramotswe are well drawn and interesting. KALAHARI is anything but a thriller, but it makes a wonderful diversion from the everyday.
Rating: 3
Summary: Another Little Gem
Comment: This is the fourth installment in the #1 Ladies Detective Agency series and once again Mr. Smith gives us a dose of African pleasure.
Precious Ramotswe finds a cure for her fiance Mr. J.L.B. Maketoni's depression and they are back on track. Her assistant Mma Makutsi starts her own typing class for men and falls in love. We get to know the apprentist mechanics a bit better and meet a few more interesting characters in search of mystery solutions from the detective agency. A few scenes are laugh out loud funny. Another enjoyable and easy read from Alexander McCall Smith.
I rated this book one star less than the others in this series because of the fact that I felt portions of this book were repeats of the prior ones. I wish that author's who write a series would just allow the books to stand on their own without feeling the need to explain over and over again who and what the characters are. If a reader picks up the fourth book in a series without reading the first three.....isn't that the readers problem. I would have prefered more character's searching for answers than answers to questions that were already provided.
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Title: Morality for Beautiful Girls by ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH ISBN: 1400031362 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 12 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith ISBN: 1400031354 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 03 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (Today Show Book Club #8) by Alexander McCall Smith ISBN: 1400034779 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 06 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: The Full Cupboard of Life: More from the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith ISBN: 0375422188 Publisher: Pantheon Books Pub. Date: 20 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Heavenly Date: And Other Flirtations by Alexander McCall Smith, Alexander McCall Smith ISBN: 1841954667 Publisher: Canongate Books Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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