I do, I suppose, think that Alexander McCall Smith earnestly does love Botswana. he just expresses that love in the most condescending way possible — the first fifteen pages, and indeed the entire book, felt like every sentence was written to remind the (implicitly white) audience, “hey, this is Botswana! we’re in Botswana. it’s a country in Africa called Botswana. have you heard of Botswana? that’s where we are, in Botswana. welcome to Botswana, the country we’re in, in Africa!”
the writing in general is overwrought and clunky, and while I hope the dialogue is stylized in order to convey the speech patterns of the community the book claims to represent, the result in fact is intensely irritating and (again) feels kind of condescending — overly precious, we might say, with some irony.
very little happens in this particular installment (and as others have noted almost none of what the blurb describes is actually...in the book...), which in some ways I’m actually kind of into? the whole book feels like it’s caught in suspension waiting — as the characters are — for the rain to come. Mma Ramotswe and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s conversation on the verandah was the high point of this, and it’s why I’m giving the book two stars.
all of this is without getting into the gender politics, which, again ironically, is a solid 75% of what this book does (get into gender politics, in a way that’s transparently coming from a straight man). let’s not even go there.
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