From a Far and Lovely Country: No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (24)
It took me a while to get around to reading From a Far and Lovely Country, the latest in Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, but I enjoyed it once I got there. The books are always very comfortable to read.
Highlights:
- She made herself a cup of red bush tea, extra strong, because it was her birthday, and prepared herself two pieces of toast that she spread thickly with butter and jam, and then made a third piece, once again because it was her birthday, and if you can’t eat three slices of thickly buttered toast on your birthday, then when can you treat yourself to such a thing?
- Mma Ramotswe imagined a few sentences that might be inserted as a note in Clovis Andersen’s book: Never take your husband with you on an enquiry. Remember that he is an unqualified person, and that he might ask embarrassing or even counter- productive questions. Tell him to stay at home. That is an important rule.
- Of course Violet Sephotho is the owner of the Cool Singles Evening Club.
- Tea was so often the solution, although in this particular case, with its potentially devastating consequences, it might be that even tea might not help very much to avert disaster.
- There were strategically placed aunts through the country-in every village, in every town-watching what was going on. They made up a network of listening posts, ready to report on what was happening, by means of what people sometimes called the bush telegraph-for that, surely, was what it was.
- Mma Ramotswe to Mma Makutsi: We do not have a safe at present, Mma, and I am not sure how secure it is keeping money in the old teapot.
- Mma Makutsi’s note to Mma Ramotswe: To my great friend, who has been so kind to me over the years, with my best wishes for your birthday, of which I hope there are many more, stretching out into the future, from Grace Makutsi, Dip. Sec. (BSC)