Kalahari Typing School for Men

Rating:
Summary: Powerful view of African traditions
Review: 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:
Summary: Strong entry in strong series
Review: THE NO.1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY was such an original and winning debut, that the subsequent novels in the series at best can only live up to it. There is no matching the surprises with which that first book was loaded, especially in terms of its characters, its setting, its wonderful voice and wit, its story structure. The good news is that Alexander McCall Smith does not betray what he has set up and he continues to use it to good effect in the 4th volume, THE KALAHARI TYPING SCHOOL FOR MEN.

For the uninitiated, this is a series set in Botswana, Africa, in which the estimable Mma Precious Ramotswe has set up a detective agency. This is not your standard mystery formula. The series relies more on the puzzles of human interactions and weaknesses in a traditional society that is rapidly adapting the first world frame of mind. This time around, Mma Ramotswe tangles with slick competition, while her assistant, the surprising Mma Makutsi, takes a more central role. The various strands of stories come together with Dickensian coincidences, but the author has already snatched your disbelief at the door so you don't care. THE KALAHARI TYPING SCHOOL has its comic moments which are not at odds with its wise reflections. My only criticism of this volume is that the author does not devote the time to exploring his original characters, Mma Ramotswe or her fiancé, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, that he gives to Mma Makutsi. He has recovered the deeper sense of the country that went missing in MORALITY FOR BEAUTIFUL GIRLS, but not to the depth of the first book in the series.


Rating:
Summary: Listen to the book!
Review: There is something about these books that really resonates with some readers. After reading the first novel, I did not really jump on the collective Botswana Bandwagon... I thought the books were nice, but found nothing exceptional about them. I am glad that I decided to continue with Book 2 though (that was my favorite so far in the series!) I decided to pick up the other books, starting with book 2, on Audio CD. I am much happier with the Audio CD versions than I was with reading the book. I found that reading the stories was a little tedious for me: The writing is very simplistic, and oftentimes the stories are very predictable. While these do show up in the Audio CD, I do not find myself as distracted by them as I did when I read the first two in the series. The reader, Lisette Lecat is absolutely superb. She is a native South African, and spent a number of years in Botswana. She knows the rhythm patterns and speech patterns of the people, and she distinguishes each character with a certain voice. This skill makes the dialogues much more interesting than reading them on the page, and her general narration really make the stories come alive for me. If it were not for her reading the books, I do not know if I would have stuck with this series.

The story of _Kalahari Typing School for Men_ was much like its immediate predecessor, _Morality for Beautiful Girls_. The novel focuses a great amount on the development of some characters, and leaves others "out to dry", and ultimately strays away from the things that made books 1 and 2 of the series so good: the cases, the interactions, and the values of the Botswana people. That is not to say that this book does not have any detective cases, but I find the novels have shifted from their original focus. However, one thing that I did like about this book is the increased role and development of Mma Makutsi. She is a great characters, and until book 3, Mma Makutsi existed in the shadows. I look forward to seeing her develop more in the next books.

I plan to LISTEN to book 5 very soon.

Rating:
Summary: Short on detecting, long on relationships.
Review: This fourth book in the series brings not a heck of a lot of detective work, and none of the astute problem-solving that made book one a literary treasure.

The main attractions this time are the opening of a rival detective agency powered by testosterone, the launching of a typing school for men powered by girl power, a long overdue apology powered by guilt, and at long last, a love interest for Mma. Makutsi, powered by hair grease and slime.

The author takes us a few levels deeper into the characters this time, and the result is a rich African brew, ideal for slow lazy sipping under a shady tree with a gentle breeze ruffling the pages, and of course a hot cup of bush tea.

Not ground breaking or earth shattering, but a very pleasant read anyway.

Amanda Richards, November 23, 2004

Rating:
Summary: A delightful, gentle book.
Review: This is a book I did not want to see end, and certainly look forward to the next in the series. Smith develops the characters in this series so the reader feels a personal relationship with them. The stories are delightful, and the descriptions of life in this part of the world is wonderful. A great book, hard to put down!

Rating:
Summary: Another in the Precious Ramotswe series
Review: This is the fourth book in The No. 1 Ladies Detective Novel series, featuring the only private detective in Gabarone, Botswana, a woman named Precious Ramotswe. Mma (Mrs. in the local language, Motswana) Ramotswe is a "traditionally-built" woman with an extra helping of common sense who decided to be a private detective, and bought a textbook which taught her how. She's now hired a secretary, Mma Makutsi, who's also traditionally-built, and somewhat disappointed that she doesn't get high-paying work because, though she scored a 97% score on the graduation test at the secretarial college, she's not glamorous-looking. Mma Ramotswe is engaged to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, who is a reliable chap if a bit dull.

In the first two installments of this series, there were several detective plots in each book. Each of the plots involved someone who had a difficulty and hired Mma Ramotswe to deal with it somehow. In the third book, there was less mystery, and more about the characters and their lives. This fourth book involves more mystery than the third, but there's also a good deal about the characters, as Mma Makutsi decides to teach typing in her spare time (hence the title) and dates one of her students, and Mma Ramotswe has to deal with rebelliousness from her foster children. The mysteries that are in the plot are the usual thing: typical human-interest problems that Mma Ramotswe can deal with by giving some sage advice.

This whole series, so far, is wonderful. The books aren't lengthy or over-written, and the characters are refreshingly unsophisticated and sincere. The author has a wonderful ability to convey the citizens of a former British colony in terms of their nature and character. They're simple country people, proud and intelligent, with a simple dignity that's at times faintly ridiculous, and they're unconcerned with other people in other lands of whom they know little. It's a wonderful series, and this book fits right in after the first three.

Rating:
Summary: Another Great One!!
Review: This is the fourth book of Smiths i have read over a period of a few weeks. I was hooked after the first one. Smith really paints a picture of life in Africa and gives great details about each character. I would love to meet Precious!! Cant wait for the next one in the series. A great short read!!!

Rating:
Summary: Another Little Gem
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: I can't wait for the next one !!
Review: This series is one the best I've read in years. The characters are compelling and Smith's descriptions of Botswana make it all come alive.

Rating:
Summary: Three cheers for McCall Smith and his fabulous book!
Review: 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