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Executive Times |
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2008 Book Reviews |
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The Good
Husband of Zebra Drive by Alexander McCall Smith |
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Rating: |
** |
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(Mildly Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Adjustments In the
eighth installment of his series “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency,” Alexander
McCall Smith meanders about all the adjustments characters make for the
emerging needs and interests of others. The Good
Husband of Zebra Drive keeps the usual cast of characters and has them
interact with some interesting clients. The patience of Precious Ramotswe becomes strained as Grace Makutsi is
considering finding another job, and J.L.B. Matekoni wants to test becoming a
detective himself. Here’s an excerpt, from the beginning of Chapter 3, “I
Have Found You,” pp. 31-35: Mma
Makutsi went home that day thinking about what
Tati Monyena had said. She preferred not to dwell upon her work once she left
the office—something that they had strongly recommended at the She had done that,
for the most part, but it was not easy when there was something as unusual—as
shocking, perhaps-as this. Even though she tried to put out of her mind the
account of the three unusual hospital deaths, the image returned of Tati
Nlonyena holding up three fingers and bringing them down one b one. So might
the passing of one’s life be marked-by the raising and lowering of a
Finger. She thought of this again as she unlocked the door of her house and
flicked the light switch. On, off: like our lives. It had not been a
good day for Mma Makutsi. She had not sought out that altercation with Mma
Ramotswe—if one could call it that—and it had left her feeling uncomfortable.
It was Mma Ramotswe’s fault, she decided; she should not have made those
remarks about shopping during working hours. One might reasonably require a
junior clerk to keep strict hours, but when it came to those at a higher
level, such as herself, then a certain leeway was surely normal. If one went
to the shops in the afternoon they were full of people who were senior enough
to take the time off to do their shopping. One could not expect such
people—and she included herself in that category—to struggle to get everything
done on a Saturday morning, when the whole town was trying to do the same
thing. If Mma Ramotswe did not appreciate that, she said to herself, then she
would have to employ somebody else. She stopped. She
was standing in the middle of the room when this thought crossed her mind,
and she realised that it was the first time she had seriously contemplated
leaving her job. And now that she had articulated the possibility, even if
only to herself, she found that she felt ashamed. Mma Ramotswe had given her
her first job when she had been beaten to so many others by those feckless,
glamorous girls from the Mma Makutsi put the
hag she was carrying on the table and started to unpack it. She had called in
at the shops on the way home and had bought the supplies that she needed for
Phuti Radiphuti’s dinner. He came to eat at her house on several evenings a
week—on the others he still ate with his father or his aunt—and she liked to
prepare him something special. Of course she knew what he liked, which was
meat, good beef fed on the sweet, dry grass of The winter day died
with the quickness of those latitudes. It seemed to be only for a few moments
that the sun made the sky to the west red, and then it was gone. The night
would be a cold one, clear and cold, with the stars suspended above like
crystals. She looked out of her window at the lights of the neighbouring
houses. Through the windows she saw her neighbours on the other side of the
road seated round the fire that she knew they liked to keep going in their
hearth throughout the winter months, triggering the memory long overlaid but
still there, of sitting round the fire at the cattle posts. Mma Makutsi had
no fireplace in her house, but she would have, she thought, when she moved to
Phuti’s house, which had more than one; mantelpieces too, on which she could
put the ornaments which she currently kept in a box behind her settee. There
would be so much room in her new life; room for all the things that she had
been unable to do because of poverty, and if she did not have to work—that
thought returned unbidden—then she would he able to do so much. And she could
stay in bed too, if she wished, until eight in the morning: such a
prospect—no dashing for the minibus, no crowding with two other people into a
seat made for two; and so often, it seemed, those others were ladies of
traditional build who could have done with an entire bench seat to
themselves. She prepared a stew
for Phuti Radiphuti and carefully measured out the beans that would
accompany it. Then she laid the table with the plates that she knew he liked,
the ones with the blue and red circles, with his teacup, a large one with a
blue design that she had bought at the bring-and-buy sale at the Anglican
Cathedral. ‘That teacup,” Mma Ramotswe had said, ‘belonged to the last Dean.
He was such a kind man. I saw him drinking from it.” “It belongs to me
now,” said Mma Makutsi. Like Mma Ramotswe,
Phuti Radiphuti drank red bush tea, which he thought was much better for you,
but he had never asked Mma Makutsi for it and had simply taken what was
served to him. He was planning, though, to make the request, but the moment
had not yet arisen and with each pot of ordinary tea served it became more
difficult for him to ask for something different. That had been Mma
Makutsi’s own quandary, resolved when she had eventually plucked up all her
courage and blurted out to NIma Ramotswe that she would like to have There were one or
two other matters which Phuti Radiphuti would have liked to raise with his
fiancée but which he had found himself unable to bring up. They were small
things, of course, hut important in a shared life. He did not take to her
curtains; yellow was not a colour that appealed to him in the slightest. In
his view, the best colour for curtains was undoubtedly light blue—the blue of
the national flag. It was not a question of patriotism: although there were
those who painted their front doors that blue for reasons of pride. And why
should they not do so, when there was a lot to be proud of? It was more a
question of restfulness. Blue was a peaceful colour, Phuti Radiphuti thought.
Yellow, by contrast, was an energetic, unsettled colour; a colour of warning,
every bit as much as red was; a colour which made one feel vaguely
uncomfortable. But when he arrived
at her house that evening, he did not want to discuss curtain colour. Quite
suddenly, Phuti Radiphuti felt grateful: simply relieved that of all the men
she must have come across, Mma Makutsi had chosen him. She had chosen him in
spite of his stammer and his inability to dance; had seen past all that and
had worked with such success on both of these defects. For that he felt
thankful, so thankful, in fact, that it hurt; for it so easily might have been
quite different. She might have laughed at him, or simply looked away with
embarrassment as she heard his unco-operative tongue mangle the liquid
syllables of Setswana; but she did not do that because she was a kind woman,
and now she was about to become his wife. Smith is a prolific writer who
seems to publish a handful of novels every year. The Good
Husband of Zebra Drive is a slow moving, gentle story about human nature
and our struggles in relationship. Steve
Hopkins, December 20, 2007 |
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Go to Executive Times Archives |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the January 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The Good Husband of Zebra
Drive.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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