A Year of Feminist Classics also had Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter as a January read as well as Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

So Long a Letter is a letter from Ramatoulaye to her expatriate best friend Aissatou, the wife of her husband’s best friend. Both are first wives of men who suddenly took second wives. In the cases of the second marriages, neither of the first wives were consulted. Aissatou divorces her husband, learns a skill, and moves overseas to work in the country’s American embassy. Ramatoulaye remains married but lives separately and raises the couple’s 12 children alone. The start of the letter informs Aissatou that Ramatoulaye’s husband Modou Fall is dead. The rest of the letter relates her reaction to her widowhood and rehashes the history of her marriage to explain how she feels now.

The introduction to the book claims it to be one of the first books that presents African women not as victims. Perhaps that suggestion influenced how I viewed the book, as the practicality of Ramatoulaye shows through, as well as her resilience in the face of adversity. You can almost hear the Gloria Gaynor song fading in during the soundtrack to the movie version.

The two main women come across as flawed but sincere women who have strength and integrity. Both are educated. One second wife is portrayed as a conniving gold-digger, the other as a clueless dupe. Both of the husbands are weak, not able to face down their first wives or families. Not all men get that treatment. One of Ramatoulaye’s suitors is very dashing, intelligent, and thoughtful of Ramatoulaye’s needs without neglecting his own. I’m not sure how I feel about these portrayals. It feels just a tad manipulative, but for all I know, that’s exactly how most men who take second wives in Senegal act.

Ramatoulaye is interested in Senegal’s politics. She reminds her suitor, a member of parliament, that only 4 of the deputies are women, less than one per province. But it’s also clear that with the division of labor, women can’t participate very well. Ramatoulaye has 12 children under her care. Even before her husband abandoned her, she had little help from him in the day to day care of them. It’s not coincidence that women started gaining political power in the U.S. when they started having access to birth control (as ineffective as it was around the turn of the century) and could start reducing their family sizes. Which is one of the reasons why I think some the U.S. most effective aid is that which goes toward family planning.

One thing to note is that the polygamy portrayed here is not the polygamy most in the U.S. are familiar with, that of the fundamentalist Mormons. Although the women are young, they are not coerced or kept powerless. The harms caused are different than the ones we’re used to seeing. Abandonment and an inability to support families is what comes up in the book. Abuse is the problem we see in the states.

No links again this time. Check A Year of Feminist Classics for roundup posts and more discussion.

Title: So Long a Letter (originally Une si longue lettre)
Author: Mariama Bâ
Cover creator: Tony Richardson (designer) / John Montgomer (art)
Series: African Writers Series
Imprint / publisher: Heinemann / Pearson
Format: Paperback
Length: 96 p.
Publication date: September 2008 (originally 1979)
ISBN-13: 978-0-435913-52-6

Who Fears Death is Nnedi Okorafor’s first speculative fiction book for adults. The subject matter is darker and heavier than her previous books targeted toward young adults. The story was inspired by the use of rape in war, where armies raped enemy women. The soldiers did this not just to demoralize them, but with a systematic goal of having the women carry their children. That’s just the start of the subject matter, which also includes misogyny, racial discrimination, genital mutilation, sex, and more. It’s ambitious, and successful with regard to the subject matter.

The main character, Onyesonwu Ubaid, is a mixed child of rape, or Ewu. Onyesonwu’s mother Najeeba lived for years in the desert raising her child before settling in Jwahir, a town far away from the war, rape, and killings between the Nuru and Najeeba’s tribe, the Okeke. The popular view is that Ewu, the children of rape, will always turn to the violence that conceived them, and so they are commonly shunned or worse. Onyesonwu has a difficult childhood, but it pales in comparison to what happens as she reaches adulthood.

Onyesonwu finds that she has the ability to change into various animals. That’s her first clue that she’s different. Her destiny is to be a sorcerer. In addition to her skills, she starts seeing a giant eye watching her. That eye is the magical eye of her raping biological father, himself a sorcerer. She needs Jwahir’s resident sorcerer to train her to be ready to fight her father. He won’t teach her, because he believe that sorcery is not for women! If she cannot become a sorcerer, her eventual confrontation with her father probably won’t go well.

Onyesonwu fights against the discrimination she faces, and does so with the right people. She changes the minds of her friends, as well as many others in Jwahir. When a band of people heads back into the desert, Onyesonwu is the leader. The changes don’t come easy. Her partner Mwiki, while accepting of his place in the heirarchy, struggles with putting aside his prejudices. He wants to. He’s generally successful. But like real life, this change doesn’t happen in one big epiphany. Sometimes his behavior doesn’t measure up to his ideals.

While I love how Okorafor deals with the themes, I did have problems with understanding characters’ motivations for specific actions and with the quest structure. The problem with the latter, is that it often resulted in disjointed episodes rather than a seamless narrative. The characters encounter one obstacle, finish with it, then move on to the next discrete obstacle. That was my big issue with The Shadow Speaker as well. I also often found myself scratching my head wondering why a character did something particular. Sometimes it would be explained afterward, sometimes not. Despite the first person narrative, I usually felt outside of Onyesonwu’s thinking.

As I’ve grown accustomed to expecting, Okorafor builds an imaginative world. It’s loosely tied to her previous books, but the exact relationship isn’t made clear. The appearance of a guide the the Greeny Jungle is a nice inside wink and nod to her previous readers. Magic exists, but so do computers and some other modern trappings, despite what appears to be a reversion (for unknown reasons) to a less technological society. Unlike urban fantasy which also mixes magic and modernity, the supernatural isn’t a seamy underbelly of reality that’s mostly unknown to the moderns who have forgotten their way. Onyesonwu and friends will use both GPS and changing into an animal to find their way, for instance. It wouldn’t have fit with the story at one particular spot, but there’s a point where Onyesonwu and friends arrive in a city, and a picture arose in my mind of them wielding magic against their foes wearing helmets as a band of scooter riding delinquents.

Worth reading. Don’t expect a lot of happy though.

Other blogged reviews:

• The OF Blog
• Today Wendy
• White Readers Meet Black Authors
• From My Bookshelf
• OCD, Vampires, and Rants, oh my!
• Neth Space

Title: Who Fears Death
Author: Nnedi Okorafor
Cover creator: GForce Design (designer)
Imprint / publisher: DAW Books
Format: Hardcover
Length: 386 p.
Publication date: June 2010
ISBN-13: 978-0-7564-0617-2

Why can’t Africa get its shit together? That’s a question I’ve had for a while. Economically many of it’s countries rank near the bottom of the scale. I don’t subscribe to the racist notion that Africans genetically are predisposed to this. It’s certainly possible that there’s a cultural reason for it, much like the U.S. has been culturally prone to electing jingo-istic right-wing politicians for the last half century. For instance, because of tribal differences, it’s difficult for an African country to agree on a political system. Though India made many inroads to solving that problem. But it’s certainly possible it’s behind Africa’s problems.

Is racism a factor? Yes. Centuries of slave raids and colonialism doesn’t leave Africa in a good position. But it doesn’t explain everything. India, China, Latin America, and other places have been subject to racism as well, and they are doing better than Africa. Perhaps less racism, or less enduring, however. Haiti, populated by African descendants, also sits near the bottom of most economic rankings. I do think European and American racism works in somewhat of a ranked fashion, so I’m sure it plays a part.

More likely there’s a big economic reason. Economics posits that people choose an option that makes the optimum allocation of resources for themselves. Of course, over the decades the profession has discovered lots of exceptions to that rule, but the general rule explains a lot of human behavior.

One economic explanation for Africa’s chronic problems is that being resource rich is a war and corruption magnet, and so saddles Africa with the likes of Mobuto Sese Seko and Samuel Doe. These despots steal the bulk of the money and leave their citizens in a worse position than ever. But Africa is not homogeneously resource rich, so there’s still something missing from the equation.

Another possible economic reason is the lack of the rule of law and functioning government prevents economic development. While certainly true, Africa has had 60 years to develop these systems. Failure to develop them is more likely a symptom though. Asia has done it. South America has too. So what’s the underlying economic reason?

Dambisa Moyo proposes in Dead Aid that the underlying economic reason is the abundance of unaccountable international aid is the key to Africa’s failure. She’s a Harvard and Oxford educated economist who’s worked on African issues for the World Bank and Goldman Sachs. She’s Zambian by birth as well, which I’m sure is a major reason why her critique of aid has gotten some traction where others have failed to get notice for similar criticisms.

Her argument says that aid works like easy resources, giving corrupt governments and businesses the opportunity and reason to steal the money, and crowds out other sources of economic growth as well. In other words, the developed world doesn’t make anyone truly accountable for the money, so of course it’s taken. To have aid work, at a minimum either we’d need to run the aid ourselves, or we have to have anti-corruption conditions and the spigot turned off when they aren’t met. Moyo doesn’t think the former is a good idea (paternalistic, among other things) and the latter isn’t credible.

In other words, not only is aid not helping, it’s actually the cause of Africa’s economic problems. I don’t know how to evaluate the claim. Aid certainly hasn’t moved Africa on a par with other regions. But it could be ameliorating a real underlying cause. Economics doesn’t often allow for controlled experiments that would solve that confusion. Aid certainly hasn’t all gone to waste, either.

Moyo proposes four alternative sources of financing for development. First, international bonds. Second, foreign direct investment. Third, international trade. And fourth, micro-loans, remittances, and other banking improvements tailored for the poor. If, in fact, aid is the underlying cause of Africa’s problems, these might have some hope of changing the game. But I am skeptical. First, that these methods won’t have the same problems that aid does. And second, that they don’t have their own problems. And lastly, even if they won’t cause the same problems, I see no incentive for the African powerful to switch, if indeed their money-grubbing ways are the mechanism through which aid fails.

International bonds would work according to Moyo because lenders wouldn’t lend money in a second round if they didn’t get their funds repaid in a first round. Aid continues to be sent even if earlier rounds are squandered. This proposal I don’t understand. Here’s why I don’t think it would work. A bond issue gets stolen by a corrupt leader. No one is willing to issue bonds to the country again, and we are back to the point where we are now: either people starve or we send aid.

Her second proposal is foreign direct investment (F.D.I.). In other words, foreign companies buying shares of projects in African countries. I think this has a better chance of success, but I don’t think it will really make much difference. In order to secure scarce opportunities, these companies will need to kick back to corrupt political leaders. There’s no guarantee that the benefits will accrue to citizens of an African country. Look at Nigeria, where foreign oil companies are causing far more damage environmentally than they are benefiting locals economically. And there’s also the problem of nationalization, where the government, for corrupt or not corrupt reasons, simply takes over a foreign companies ownership. Without strong legal protections, this can happen easily. Without addressing those problems, I don’t see F.D.I. being the driver of economic growth. But it has potential benefits and may be a piece of the solution.

The third proposal is increased international trade. Comparative advantage results in large surpluses than benefit the citizenry. I see this as the best opportunity. However, as Moyo notes, there are many barriers to this. The first world would need to drop punitive tariffs. There’s more incentive for African countries to reduce barriers to each other, but there are more jurisdictions involved and they have much smaller economies. It’ll be a lot of diplomatic work to get that established there, and the benefits aren’t huge for each one. But if first world countries get in the act, it could have a huge effect. If.

Lastly, Moyo pushing banking services for the poor. Micro-loans. Removing barriers to remittances. Forms of deposit accounts geared toward small depositors to get local money moving through the economy instead of being hidden under mattresses. Again, while this has great potential, it has high transaction costs. In other words, since individual deposits and loans are small, it takes a lot of them to make a difference. And that takes a lot of bankers to make it work, who cost money and take time.

Lastly, there’s the problem of making the switch to these new methods. Why would a corrupt leader pick a high cost bond with conditions over low cost aid that he can steal easily? Or give up control in F.D.I. when there’s low cost money in aid? And a non-corrupt government would be taking on a lot of risk to use high cost bonds for projects that don’t result in easy ways to pay them off. The only way the switch can happen is if aid is cut off on the other side. But that would entail an ugly period of transition, and it’s hard to watch people suffer in the mean time and do nothing. Moyo recognizes this to a certain extent. Her book’s intended audience (according to the last chapter) is actually the western world’s public. She thinks the only way to change the aid paradigm is by pressure from the West. Which seems pretty paternalistic to me, and that’s something she criticizes. But aside from that, the limit of our influence would be to cut off aid, if we could do that at all. We have little power with investors who would be needed to set up bonds, F.D.I. or micro-banking.

The short version of all this is I think Moyo might very well be on to something here. She’s not the first to make these proposals and I’m sure there’s some very serious study going on about them. But I don’t think her case is convincing, and definitely not convincing enough to make wholesale changes yet. Yet. I’m a big fan of controlled capitalism and using markets to steer the world to good ends. These very well could work, if someone works out the problems with them. You’ll need far more than a 150 page polemic to convince the people who need convincing.

A few other blogged reviews:

• Africa Can … End Poverty
• State of the Planet
• Zambian Economist
• Amy Reads
• Grumpy the Penguin

Title: Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is A Better Way For Africa
Author: Dambisa Moyo
Imprint / publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan
Format: Hardcover
Length: 154 p.
Publication date: 2009
ISBN-10: 0-374-13956-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-374-13956-8

I think this is the first autobiography of an African I’ve read where the writer hasn’t spent significant amount of time in Europe or the United States. William Kamkwamba frames his story without much European affectation. Being young, he doesn’t write with the knowledge of where his life and choices took him; that remains in the future. His biography has much more immediacy and less remoteness than one can expect from an older and more experienced person. Although written in the past tense, it feels present tense.

William Kamkwamba is a 23 year old Malawian from a smallish village called Wimbe. Most residents are farmers, and barely above subsistence level. Due to a number of family setbacks, including a devastating famine that affected all of Malawi, Kamkwamba dropped out of his rural school. The family could no longer afford his tuition. But being a bright, inquisitive tinkerer, William pored through books on physics from a 3 bookshelf library. From that, he got the idea to build a windmill which could provide electricity to his family household. Built mostly from scrap bicycle, automobile, and tractor parts, the windmill went from powering a small bulb to wiring multiple rooms in the house. His eventual goal was to power a pump so that the family would not be subject to famines due to drought conditions.

Kamkwamba’s do-it-yourself tinkering mindset is what got him noticed, though it took some time. Malawian newspapers noticed at first. Then international bloggers picked it up. Then he was invited to talk at TED. Then a documentary about him was made. And then Bryan Mealer tracked him down to tell his story in this book.

The story isn’t just Kamkwamba’s windmill though. It covers his earliest memories up until his return to school as a result of his windmill notoriety. I found the stories in his early life much more interesting than the nuts and bolts of putting together a windmill. By the time the windmill story gets moving, Kamkwamba is somewhat on auto-pilot. His personality and drive has already been formed. The earlier parts actually do a pretty good job of showing why he has the drive he does. He becomes motivated by a desire to better his family’s situation. He has an earnestness that is very charming.

I have some concerns about the narrative after Kamkwamba achieves fame. He briefly describes a trip he took to the United States. It veers towards a Eddie Murphy Coming to America rube awed by the strange technologies of the white man kind of vibe. I wanted to both congratulate Kamkwamba on having made it while simultaneously tell him he’s better than merely wondering at the skyscrapers. Luckily, my impression of him from his presentation at the Seattle Public Library last fall didn’t leave me with the idea that he was overwhelmed, so maybe I’m reading more into that section than I should.

As painful as it is for me to write this, Charles Mudede also has a point about Kamkwamba. I write painful because normally Mudede’s navel gazing makes me cringe. And his city/country dichotomy is somewhat elitist. But I think he’s right about why Kamkwamba is getting first world attention: it fits in with the preconceptions of a white guy like me. One of the commenters makes the point much better than Mudede does:

Guys like the windmill guy always get the attention because it feeds into the totally narrow American view of who Africans are. … Africa is only about poor people living in the bush, with disease and misery all the time. That’s the view. And wow, looky there, at the simple windmill guy – aw, how heartwarming for all of us. Sniff, sniff. Africans like Dambisa Moyo (who none of you likely know), a successful economist and author from Zambia, you never hear about, do you? SHE’S not Africa for us. We just want warm and fuzzy stories about simple folk out in the bush making windmills. Cause it makes us feel good.

Reading around blogs on this book, the word inspiring comes up a lot. I do not think it means what these people think it means. Kamkwamba has a very feel good story, but if more than a couple of handful of people have built their own windmills because they read this book, I’d be highly surprised. Kamkwamba has certainly done some inspiring, particularly through encouraging people to donate to his pet charities. But I’m betting only a small fraction of people will actually be inspired to change things they actually do. Which is why I kind of agree with Mudede and the other commenters sentiments. This book feels good, but it isn’t particularly game changing.

That doesn’t take anything away from what Kamkwamba has done. He’s a smart kid who has overcome odds. And he’s got a huge amount of potential to become much more than a rural over-achiever. He didn’t just overcome odds. He also had a vision for his family and worked to achieve it. He wasn’t just looking to get ahead; he wanted to break the cycle. Both from the book and from his appearance, I get the feeling he’s destined for something more than being the simple guy who made good. I sure hope so. He may be a game changer.

Beyond Kamkwamba’s personal story, his book offers a look into life in Malawi, both economically and culturally. Kamkwamba doesn’t paper over things like belief in witchcraft or government corruption. The reader gets a first hand look at what something just above subsistence farming looks like first hand, what people do with their time, how school works, what town life is like, and more. These pieces of African life, while not particularly surprising, aren’t something with which I was familiar.

A few other blogged reviews:

• Amanda Wells at Wyld About Business
• My Heart’s In Accra

Title: The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope
Authors: William Kamkwamba; Bryan Mealer
Cover creator: Mary Schuck (designer/illustrator)
Imprint / publisher: William Morrow / HarperCollins
Format: Hardcover
Length: 270 p.
Publication date: 2009
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-173032-0

As noted a couple of days ago, I visited the Seattle Public Library last month looking for books by authors of color. Specifically I was looking for the book by Suzan-Lori Parks and anything by Octavia Butler. But while heading to the fiction stacks from the catalog computers, I passed a display for writers from Africa. (And when the library puts up an endcap or a display, it isn’t because publishers paid them for it.) Fortuitous! The Stone Virgins by Yvonne Vera came from that display.

The first two thirds of The Stone Virgins consists mostly of poetic description of Bulawayo and Kezi, Zimbabwe, and their environs. Extended descriptions of the marula tree, marula fruit, and marula nuts (a pit inside the fruit), their smell and substance, and the air after the fruit falls from the trees. Pages of sweet nothings between one character Thenjiwe and an unnamed lover who debarks from the Bulawayo to Kezi bus before following her home. Soldiers hiding in ancestral caves. Description description description. Beautiful description.

But I found all that very hard to read. It’s not that there is no plot, or no characters whatsoever. But they are hard to anchor to as individuals. They appear very much as portions of a texture. I couldn’t really back away and see the whole picture, so I couldn’t hold on to that either. Nevertheless, I really liked these descriptions. Very evocative.

If it was just the descriptions though, I’d not have enough. The two main characters are the sisters Thenjiwe and Noncebe. The region around Bulawayo where they live was mired in guerrilla fighting around Zimbabwean independence. Vera seems careful to avoid naming the sides that ravage Kezi. Thenjiwe’s erstwhile lover reads of Noncebe in the hospital after an attack. Perhaps as penance for not saving Thenjiwe he resolves to rescue Noncebe from her dangerous position in the countryside.

I’m glad I read it, but I probably wouldn’t recommend it to anyone except a lit major.

Title: The Stone Virgins
Author: Yvonne Vera
Cover creator: Lynn Buckley (designer) / Paige Deponte (photographer)
Imprint / publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Format: Hardcover
Length: 184 p.
Publication date: 2003
ISBN-10: 0-374-27008-2

I really liked Nnedi Okorafor’s Zahrah the Windseeker, and seeing Nnedi Okorafor on a couple of panels at Wiscon made me like her even more. I’d be hard-pressed to think of someone more positive than her. So I picked up The Shadow Speaker at the dealer room.

The Shadow Speaker has a lot in common with Zahrah the Windseeker: a setting that appears in both books, a young female protagonist learning her new powers, male supporting cast, and similarly creative fantastic creatures. All of that was awesome! What wasn’t awesome was the disjointed hero quest plot. Zahrah had to save her friend. Ejii has to save five extra-dimensional worlds from war. Along the way she encounters seemingly random obstacles that seem to be there only to introduce Ejii to her traveling companions. I was disappointed overall.

Ejimofor Ejii Ugabe is a shadow speaker living in magical Kwàmfà in West Africa in 2070. The Great Change, a nuclear war semi-aborted by interfering technology released by a peace group, released magic as a more powerful force than technology. Some people fear meta-humans such as flying wind-seekers and extra-sensory shadow speakers because of superstition and some view them as normal.

The semi-mythical Jaa has ruled Kwàmfà for a few years. She’d established the town and then gone away. During Jaa’s time away, Ejii’s father ruled the village in manner similar to current day Islamic countries, hard and discriminating, before Jaa returned and summarily executed Ejii’s father. Time has passed though, and Jaa heads to a great peace conference in Ginen across the desert and through a dimensional portal. Ejii, no lover of her own father, follows and hopes to join Jaa because the shadows have told her she must go to prevent the war.

The strength of the book is the creativity Okorafor used to create creatures and situations. She included giant sentient sandstorms, talking camels, ostrich-like birds that will carry women but not men, and more.

Ejii is a solid main character, particularly for a girl. She isn’t a cookie cutter stereotype that seems to plague a lot of young adult female characters. She’s smart but not super-brainy. Mostly respectful when she deals with others. Sometimes resourceful, but able to let others such as her fellow school-age shadow speakers help her. In short, I like her. Her traveling companion Dikéogu treats her as an equal or sometimes as his better. He’s charmingly stubborn.

Stubbornness seems to be a prominent characteristic for every character though. In addition, the adults all seem to have a streak of knee-jerk in them that felt extremely false to me. I might not have noticed if it weren’t combined with the mundane plotting.

And that’s the Achilles heel for the book, the plotting. As Ejii journeys, she periodically encounters obstacles, resolves them, and moves on. Episodic is the mold for a hero quest, of course. In this case, each obstacle, whether it’s a group of man-eating cats, a sandstorm, a magician, or a hotel desk clerk, follows a very predictable path and then goes away and Ejii continues her journey. They don’t build on each other, excepting the lesson Ejii learns from each builds on previous lessons. But the events themselves usually just leave Ejii back on her journey having learned her lesson but having advanced no further in her actual quest.

I think lots of people, possibly including the young adults at which the book is targeted, won’t have that reaction to the plot because they will be enjoying the scenery. So I hesitate to unrecommend it. For me though, it was very middle of the road.

Some other blogged reviews:

• Attention Rebellious Jezebels
• Morsie Reads
• Muslimah Media Watch
• Becky’s Book Reviews
• SherMeree’s Musings
• Andy Wolverton

Title: The Shadow Speaker
Author: Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
Cover creator: Elizabeth H. Clark (designer) / Luca Trovato and Colin Samuels (photographers)
Imprint / publisher: Jump at the Sun / Disney Hyperion
Format: Paperback
Length: 336 p.
Publication date: 2007
ISBN-13: 978-142310036-2
Subject: Adventure and adventurers — Juvenile fiction
Subject: Adventure and adventurers — Fiction
Subject: Fantasy
Subject: Sahara — Juvenile fiction
Subject: Africa — Juvenile fiction
Subject: Sahara — Fiction
Subject: Africa — Fiction
LC classification: PZ7.O4157 Sh 2007

Banks’ The Sweet Hereafter is one of my favorite novels of all time. Affliction is another excellent book. But despite the blurbs on the back of The Darling from Entertainment Weekly and USA Today claiming that this is the best book of the year, I thought it was only average.

The plot centers around Hannah Musgrave. Alienated from her parents, she drifts from the Weather Underground to Ghana to the central setting of the story, Monrovia Liberia. There she marries Woodrow Sundiata, a U.S. educated deputy health minister. This is in the mid-70s. Her husband survives the coup that topples the Tolbert government and installed Samuel Doe as president. But things really start going to hell when Sundiata gets between Doe and Charles Taylor (who would later depose Doe).

I have one major problem with the plot. Banks contrives ways to insert Musgrave into every major historical event in Liberia between 1975 and 1992. She’s not a central actor in most of them, but somehow coincidentally happens to be in the right place in the right time. It’s just too contrived.

I also had huge problems with the Musgrave character. She’s not interesting. She has no connection with any other character in the book. They are objects on a table to her, and not in useful manner. In other words, she doesn’t use people, nor is she used by them. She’s just there.

The thing I liked a lot about the book is that it’s central story tells the recent history of Liberia. It doesn’t really give much of any of the motivations and reasoning behind the characters and players. It does describe the scenes and the mayhem that was the government and the civil war, and that’s not something that most people have much connection with. The Darling lets us peek into that world. But overall it’s not enough for me to recommend this book.

Title: The darling
Author: Russell Banks
Imprint / publisher: Harper Perennial / HarperCollins
Format: Paperback
Length: 392 p.
Publication date: October 2005
ISBN-10: 0-06-095735-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-095735-3
Subject: Americans — Liberia — Fiction
Subject: Human-animal relationships — Fiction
Subject: Animals — Treatment — Fiction
Subject: Endangered species — Fiction
Subject: Women — Liberia — Fiction
Subject: Chimpanzees — Fiction
Subject: Liberia — Fiction
LC classification: PS3552.A49D37 2004

Morality for Beautiful Girls is the third in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, but the second and last one I will read. It’s not a horrible book, but neither of the two I’ve read inspired me. In this installment, Mma Ramotswe investigates the sister-in-law of a Government Man to see if she is poisoning the brother. And Mma Makutsi picks the one good girl out of a group of beauty contestants so that the contest won’t be embarrassed by thieving or otherwise bad girls. And she also takes over as Acting Manager of the Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors business as Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni recovers from depression at an orphanage, at the insistence of Mma Ramotswe her fiance. Mma Makutsi has much success with managing the repair shop as well as with getting the assistants to actually work.

What turns me off more than anything else is the artificially simple in the face of modernity characters. Perhaps people in Botswana are like that. They seem to accept the march of progress, but puzzle at it as if it is all completely foreign. It’s hard to describe, but I find it very off-putting.

Title: Morality for beautiful girls
Author: Alexander McCall Smith
Cover artist: Hélène Whitwell
Series: No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency book 3
Imprint / publisher: Anchor Books / Random House
Format: Paperback
Length: 227 p.
Publication date: November 2002
ISBN-10: 1-4000-3136-2
Subject: Ramotswe, Precious (Fictitious character) — Fiction
Subject: Women private investigators — Botswana — Fiction
Subject: Beauty contests — Fiction
Subject: Botswana — Fiction
LC classification: PR6063.C326 M67 2002

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series doesn’t really impress me based on this book. The book is a series of short cases solved by the first lady detective in Botswana, Mma Ramotswe. She’s a simple woman, and she thinks simply. When the author lets us into Ramotswe’s head, it’s like you would imagine an uneducated tribesman would sound. And yet she deals with complex and modern things every day. The thought process is naive, I guess. But she shows little naivete. To me, this dichotomy distracts from some otherwise interesting mysteries. Some of them are whodunits. Some are intrigues where Ramotswe cons bad guys back. And some are just Ramotswe proving a point. Fairly inventive, but nothing earth-shattering.

And that can pretty much be said about the whole book. Inventive, but not earth-shattering.

Title: The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
Author: Alexander McCall Smith
Series: No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency book 1
Imprint / publisher: Anchor Books / Random House
Format: Paperback
Length: 235 p.
Publication date: August 2002 (original pub. 1998)
ISBN-10: 1-4000-3477-9
Subject: Women private investigators — Botswana — Fiction
Subject: Botswana — Fiction
LC classification: PR6063.C326 N6 2002