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Saturday, May 15, 2010

Double Comfort Safari Club by Alexander McCall Smith


I read as many murder mysteries as anything else and I rarely blog on them--they are diversionary rather than thought provoking for me. Which is not to say that they have not shaped my view of mankind and the world. They have. But those are mostly thoughts that I keep to myself. I am breaking that rule for this book, which is not so much a murder mystery as a parable about life.
I loved the first book in this series, and the first few that followed it. Precious Ramotswe is a fresh voice in an old genre, and the investigations are not so much about clues and forensics but rather human nature and what motivates people to do the things they do. Somewhere in the middle it got a little bit less wise, but this book is a return to the early days, and in fact there is little in the way of mystery about the story. It is more about the choices that people make.
The part of the story that hit home for me is that Mma Ramotswe comes to the conclusion that it is not so much what happens to you in your life that really matters, bt rather how you respond to it. Her assistant is faced with a very difficult situation, which Mma Ramotswe helps her with, but in the course of events she realizes that happiness is what you make of it, not what happens. We could all learn from that.

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