Mma Ramotswe, founder and owner of The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency in Gabarone, Botswana, sat in her office, a steaming cup of redbush tea in front of her. Her former secretary and now colleague, Mma Makutsi, was busy at her own desk. ‘Mma,’ said Mma Ramotswe. ‘I have some news.’
‘You have some news, Mma? What is this news? I hope it is good news.’
‘It is about Mr Alexander McCall Smith. He has written another book about us. It is the sixteenth book.’
‘Ow!’ said Mma Makutsi. ‘Sixteen books! That is a lot of books, Mma. I think Mr Alexander McCall Smith is a very clever man. It is very clever to write sixteen books about the same people.’
‘Yes. Mr Alexander McCall Smith is a very clever man. He writes many other books as well.’
Mma Ramotswe reflected for a while on how it all began. After her beloved daddy Obed Ramotswe, that great judge of cattle, had become late, she had been very sad. But she had bought her house on Zebra Drive and started her own business. Later she had married that good and kind man, Mr J L B Matekoni, proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. There had been many cases since that time. She sighed. Those were exciting days. But now?
‘I have been thinking, Mma,’ she said.
‘Yes? What have you been thinking, Mma Ramotswe? Have you been thinking about the sixteen books?’
‘I have been thinking that there is nothing more to say. That is what I am thinking.’
‘What are you saying, Mma? Are you saying there is nothing more to say about us?’
‘Yes, that is what I am saying. That there is nothing more to say.’
‘I think you are right, Mma. Sometimes there is nothing more to say about a thing. That is well known.’
Mma Ramotswe drank her tea. Outside, the sun beat down. Soon there would be rain. The grass would grow and the cattle would feed. Life would go on.
Thousands of miles away, callmemadam was reading the book the ladies had been discussing. ‘I think it is time for this series to end,’ she thought. ‘That is what I think.’
I read this book courtesy of NetGalley.
![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
huskyteer and finished within twenty four hours. Ballard is not really my kind of writer but I loved Empire of the Sun. It still bugs me that Hotel du Lac won the Booker prize in 1984 when Ballard’s wonderful novel was on the shortlist. Ballard was brought up in Shanghai, the privileged child of a prosperous expat. community surrounded by the appalling filth and poverty of the native Chinese. He spent two and a half years in a Japanese internment camp then after the war travelled to a depressing, defeated-seeming England, where he felt like an alien. These events help to explain how in spite of a public school education and Cambridge, despite living in the same suburban house for fifty years, he has managed to remain an outsider in his head. This autobiography is beautifully written and reads like a novel. Highly recommended.
