The Adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha

The story of Don Quixote is a simple one. Alonzo Quixada, an avid reader of tales of chivalry, decides one day that it is his destiny to become a knight-errant. He finds himself a knight-like name, some armour, a horse, a name for the horse, and a lady-love, and later a squire (the wonderful Sancho Panza), and sets off to do good deeds. This makes up the entirety of the content of Cervantes' masterpiece.

To be honest, until very recently I wouldn't have called this a masterpiece - in fact, the only reason I enjoyed this book at all was because I approached it not as a fun novel to read for relaxation, but as an intellectual challenge, a problem to be solved. I wrote summaries, I asked questions. The slightest, most irrelevant inconsistency warranted a note in the margin and a dog-eared page corner. But despite my perseverance, Cervantes' supposed genius largely eluded me. Having heard that it was at heart a very sad tale, I filled my notebook with naive ruminations about which part of the plot might turn out to be the 'sad bit'. Fascinated by the character of Sancho Panza, I underlined his every quotation, searching desperately for some hint of complexity, of charactorial depth. I found it not - every quotation seemed to prove that Sancho was exactly what he seemed to be: a stupid, greedy simpleton.

And yet, there were some things that stood out, questions which I kept coming back to and which seemed to be important. Why are there so many irrelevant stories woven into the plot? Why are the female characters as they are? Why is it so self-referential, so self-aware, in a way more similar to post-modernism than anything else I've read? And I started, gradually, as I thought about it, to realise that there was much more to this book than I had thought.

And then I went to the good old Melbourne University library and pulled out a stack of books of literary criticism, some of which turned out to be good enough to be read in their own right (not my usual opinion of literary crirticism). And I was swayed! When you read something as beautifully written as this, and true besides, can you not help but be moved, to tears and to hugs and to monuments to Cervantes' eternal genius?

"Like a butterfly from a chrysalis, Don Quixote emerges from his mediocre past with bright colours and a strange costume, ready to leave his friends and neighbours behind, ready to fly away. One day he looks around in his own backyared in his village and finds nothing that can compare with his readings. Surely the real world has sunk very low; certainly something must be done to lift it to a higher level. Don Quixote mounts his horse and goes forth. We know, as his readers, that he will fail time and time again in his quest for justice. But should he not have tried? Should no one have tried to bring a little justice, a little beauty, a little love to a sad world?"(Fighting Windmills: Encounters with Don Quixote, Duran and Rogg, 2006, p69)

And I realised also that in my obsessive scrutiny of Sancho's character, I had completely neglected to notice the extraordinary way that he, and also Don Quixote, grows and changes throughout the novel (though probably this was also due to the rather stilted, exam-interrupted way in which I read it). I also learned a lot of other things worthy of being known and recited, some of which I here relate:

In Cervantes' time (the late 1500's) there existed a genre of fiction known as the chivalric romance, a type of book in which heroes go off to do battle against giants and armies of thousands to win the love of their pure, fair, dull-as-ditchwater lady waiting in a tower at home, waving a white handkerchief out the window and crying dulcet tears of rosewater and lily petals into an ewer of pure crystal. Or whatever. Anyway, this type of book was the trashy romance of the day - it was immensely popular (in fact, Cervantes has two characters discuss the dismal state of literature and theatre for the entirety of two chapters, and in the margin of the copy I borrowed from the library someone has written in beautiful Victorian handwriting 'Cervantes is truly a writer for all ages!'), and essentially a hangover from the Medieval period. So Cervantes sets out to write a parody of this genre, presumably to reveal to the masses the error of their ways and encourage them to read something decent for once, for god's sake. This is no secret; he announces it proudly and rather big-headedly in the preface to Part I.

But the chivalric romance is not the only thing influencing Cervantes. Two other contemporary genres also make an appearance: that of the pastoral novel (shepherds, sheep, Arcadia, unspoiled wilderness, sheep, etc.) and that of the picaresque adventure story (danger, excitement, deprivation, courage, etc.). In Don Quixote, Cervantes combines these three different aesthetics and effectively reinvents them, the alterations he makes revealing his dissatisfaction with the way they represent life, and truth. Life is quite clearly none of these three genres, even though it may occasionally possess elements of each (which, I posit, is the answer to my first question: "why so many irrelevant stories?" Many of these asides are textbook examples of the chivalric romance, pastoral fantasy or the picaresque. I would like to think that the somewhat clumsy way they are interwoven with the main story is an indication of their inability to represent reality - in contrast to the hard-headed grit of the main plot, the failure is obvious). None of these genres, alone or even combined, is enough to describe life with any semblance of accuracy. Hence, Cervantes satirises them, and reveals their essential futility by having his main character attempt to live one. And Don Quixote is forced to abandon his illusions one by one by the hard reality that surrounds him, to the point of his renunciation at the very last. This, my friends, is tragedy at its finest.

Don Quixote was written in two parts, the first published in 1605 and the second in 1615, just a year before Cervantes' death. The difference between the two is extraordinary. Part I is an amusing farce with some interesting aspects; Part II is a masterpiece that anticipates centuries of literary endeavour. It is deeply psychological, it treats its female characters in an entirely new way, and it is devastatingly self-reflective. And many other things that I haven't mentioned.

For me while I was reading, the most interesting aspect of the book was its metafictional qualities. It is confusingly self-aware, with the opinions of the narrator (Cervantes, whose books are mentioned in the prose and who also appears as a character at one point), the supposed 'author' (Cid Hamet Benengali), and the unnamed translator (Cid Hamet was a Moor, so of course it was originally written in Arabic) all appearing in the course of the text. Furthermore, the story is temporarily interrupted because a part of the manuscript is apparently lost and only found by sheer luck, and at least one chapter is suspected by the translator to be apocryphal (which means, of course, that Cervantes put it in deliberately). In Part II, it is announced that Part I has already been published, and thus the other characters are aware of Don Quixote and his madness - a narrative decision with very interesting consequences. Moreover, it emerges that a fake Part II has been published in which Don Q and Sancho have been portrayed most unflatteringly (and, it must be said, unfairly). (Amazingly enough, as an unusually helpful footnote of Edith Grossman's informed me, this actually happened, and this aspect of Part II was written in part as a rebuke to the guy who did it. A better example of life imitating - or complementing - art I have never encountered.) All these things and, I'm sure, many more that I've forgotten draw attention in a most conspicuous way to the problematic nature of fiction, and of texts in general.

So why does Cervantes do this? Tempting as it is to assume his motives were the same as those of the post-modernists who were to use similar techniques over 350 years later, I'm not sure that this is the correct answer. Is it possible that one man, writing in a way that had never been seen before (with the possible exception of The Tale of Genji, written six centuries earlier and on the other side of the world) (um, by the way, Cervantes is widely credited with the invention of the novel, I should probably have mentioned that earlier), could be making the same points as people who were writing to challenge the traditionalism of a medium that had existed for over three hundred years, a medium invented by Cervantes himself? (the mind boggles.) Maybe. After all, many people (numbering among them Thomas Mann, Vladimir Nabokov, Michel Foucault and Harold Bloom), claim Don Quixote to be a work of genius (or words to that effect; I'm leaning towards that opinion myself); or even the greatest novel ever written (I hesitate to make such a claim, but it may well be true). Nonetheless, I suspect it to be unlikely (that Cervantes' and the pomos had the same motives; can you even follow my argument with all the brackets I'm using?); in any case, it is much more likely that Cervantes had entirely different, but still valid, reasons for doing what he did. I have a few theories:

1. Just for fun! Although I personally never found Don Q to be a total laff-fest (the underlying poignancy was too strong to completely dismiss, though my subconscious certainly did its best) it is most certainly written in a light-hearted, even playful way. Maybe this is just his friendly way of messing with his readers' heads. If so, he certainly succeeded - four hundred years later, the critics still can't agree.

2. To reinforce the main theme of the book, which, in case you haven't picked it up already, is most pithily summed up here. As an example, we are told, practically simultaneously, that all Moors are liars, cheats, idol-worshippers, incapable of understanding rational argument, and prone to criminal levels of exaggeration, and that the Moorish author Cid Hamet Benengali is an honest and truthful chronicler (at one point, he also swears on his faith as a Catholic Christian, whatever that's supposed to mean). "Don't trust everything you read!" is Cervantes' perpetual refrain (Wikipedia deniers, behold your new Messiah). "The truth is less straightforward than you think!"

3. He is simply engaging in some healthy parody. Another helpful Edith Grossman footnote (two in the same book! I would never have believed it) informs me that telling the story as if from the point of view of a traslator who happened to find a manuscript was a common trope used in, you guessed it, chivalric romances. So maybe Cervantes was just exaggerating this trait to the point of farce.

4. He wanted to create a sense of distance between the characters and author, and by extension, change the way they are perceived by the reader. By presenting the story as a history (even if the reader knows that it isn't really), he in a sense releases the characters from the restrictions of fiction. They are no longer creations of the heat-oppressèd brain, but independent entities who have control over their fate.

5. An interesting theory that I read is that Cervantes, like all authors who lacked a wealthy patron, existed on rather precarious finances. Perhaps, Duran and Rogg suggest, he constantly draws attention to the presence, or existence, of an author as an appeal to the reader to give him some money or something. Whether this is conscious or unconscious, Duran and Rogg do not specify.

In short (finally! you declare), do I recommend that you read this book? The answer, dear reader, is YES. However, don't expect it to be a walk in the park (to use a Sancho-esque proverb). Maybe I'm just stupid or whatever, but a lot of people on goodreads seem to have given it four or five stars without appearing to have had any trouble at all. I don't get that. For me, it was hard work, and it took two and a half months. BUT: incredibly rewarding.

If you do choose to read it, think carefully about the translation. I mainly read an 1868 translation by Charles Jervas, which had wonderful engravings and was basically wonderful, and which I sort of cross-referenced with the Edith Grossman translation. The Grossman translation seems to be widely acknowledged as the best (it was just the one that happened to be in the bookshop, for me - also it had a prettier cover than the Penguin edition), but I don't like it nearly as much. It is, I can tell, highly accurate, but the Jervas translation is so much more fun! It's much more idiomatic, much more lively, and feels much less like reading a translation. I've heard the original 1755 Tobias Smollett translation is good for the same reason, and it's probably much easier to find than the Jervas. There are certainly good arguments for accurate, literal translations, but who gives. Also the Grossman has tonnes of footnotes, most of which are useless and highly irritating (who cares how many US cents a maravedi is equal to? It's screamingly obviously a unit of currency, and that is ALL I WANT OR NEED TO KNOW), but every now and then comes along one that is incredibly useful, like the ones I cited in this review.

(Excellent) References (that you might want to consider reading yourself because they are so good)

Fighting Windmills: Encounters with Don Quixote. Manuel Duran and Fay R. Rogg, 2006.

Beyond Fiction: the Recovery of the Feminine in the Novels of Cervantes. Ruth El Saffar

The Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote de la Mancha. ed. Sieber, McGraw-Hill, 2005.

I apologise profusely for my bizarrely inconsistent recording of bibliographic details.

That They May Face the Rising Sun: I really wish I could enjoy this book

But it's driving me crazy. The slow pace, the stupid characters (by which I don't mean that the characters are badly done - on the contrary, stupidity is part of their nature), the constant use of the passive voice, the sort of skaz (I don't know if I'm using this term correctly) in the narrative... it all combines to make an extremely annoying book.

I see exactly what McGahern's doing (or I think I see it) and kudos to him, because it's brilliant. The book is a continuous stream of anecdotes, an exercise in the minutiae of characterisation and plot. It describes a year in the life of Joe and Kate Ruttledge and their neighbours. We meet the spine-chillingly horrid John Quinn, we hear the sad tale of Johnny, we learn about Bill Evans' unhappy childhood... it's all fascinating and beautiful, in its way. The prose mimics the slowness of life in a place where little happens, but everything that happens is news. It's a beautiful depiction of a place and an era, though it's not immediately clear to what era it belongs.

I think I'm too impatient, and that's why I can't like it. I'm constantly pressed for time at the moment, and I feel like I'm wasting it whenever I slip into the contemplative, relaxed state that I need to read this book. I thrive on tension, adrenaline, and that is something that has nothing to do with this wonderful book. I may finish it... one day. I may even get to it in the next few weeks or so, once all my assessment is over. In the meantime, I'll be moving on to The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster.

But what an amazing title!

Ayn Rand - EPIC CLICHE

Ayn, my dear, dear friend. If only I knew how to pronounce your first name. Anyway. I have read only one of Rand's books, Atlas Shrugged. Since this seems to be generally accepted as her opus magnum, there didn't seem much point to me reading her other books, especially as finding the literary relevance in them is sometimes a bit of a struggle. This is what I wrote in my diary the first time I read Atlas Shrugged:

"...I am also reading 'Atlas Shrugged' by Ayn Rand. I was somewhat doubtful as
to whether or not I should buy this book, but I had $5 left on a book voucher
and nothing else to spend it on, so I took the plunge. Let me tell you, that was
quite possibly the best spent $16 in my life. Whenever I stop reading it, I feel
as if have just surfaced from a whirlpool, gasping for breath and exhausted. I
feel like my emotions have been put through a wringer. I feel like everything I
have seen or heard in my life is worthless and I should simply commit suicide
because there is no point living anymore. I feel like I have suddenly succumed
to manic depression. So anyway, 'the Bronze Horseman' is getting deservedly
pushed to one side and 'Atlas Shrugged' will soon take pride of place on my
shelf of favourite books above my desk."

I've read that book once since, and these sentiments are still true, in a way. I know she's an unpopular old bitch, but she has her merits. Also her faults, but there is simply no doubt that she is far, far superior to Paullina Simons (author of the aforementioned The Bronze Horseman), or however the hell she spells her corrupted name. Here's the thing. Ayn Rand's prose is power. Pure, unadulterated power. It's brute force, but there's no subtlety, no beauty, nothing aesthetically pleasing. When you stop reading it, you do feel as if you're clawing your way out of a whirlpool. It's powerful all right, but somehow bruising.

She got me at an impressionable age - it was when I was just starting to read the odd bit of what I think of as 'proper literature'. I hadn't much experience with beautiful prose, and anything that moved me seemed good. Now, I like to think I'm older and wiser, and the second time I read it (which was about a month or so ago), I was less impressed. Even though I only vaguely remembered the plot, it was much less moving. This time I noticed the clunky prose, the one-dimensional characters and above all, the clichés. Her obsession with the naked shoulder, tension in the posture - after the first fifty or so times she uses those phrases, it starts to get a bit old. Actually, I've never seen anything so blatantly repetitive. It takes the cliché to a whole new level.

I must for a moment turn to her characters. Oh lordy! Cardboard cutouts have more personality and less predictability. THE GOOD PEOPLE HAVE NO FAULTS. THE BAD PEOPLE HAVE NO MERITS. I must say, though, I loved the names. Dagny Taggart, Hank Rearden, Francisco D'Anconia. They have an element of onomatopoeia, yet they are totally believable (the names, not the characters). Then, I think it's probably much easier to name her characters, because they have no subtlety.

And the philosophy! Oh, the philosophy! It is a philosophy of extremes, which is not totally unsurprising given she grew up in communist Russia. The most fervent admirer of her that I have ever met also grew up in a communist country. In my experience, extremes breed extremes, and neither side is any good. Her far-right obsession with capitalism had me reeling a bit. I couldn't quite work out if she was actually serious. Trying to prove a political theory by basing a novel on it in a world so one-dimensional and lacking in shades of grey that it actually. could. not. exist? And yet she actually expects us to be convinced? How could any theory based on such fraudulent premises ever carry any weight whatsoever? I find it impossible to evaluate her ideas because what she's talking about can never exist. It's so ridiculous that I feel like I've missed something big and obvious.

ETA: actually, possibly part of the big and obvious thing I'm missing is that part of her philosophy is the concept of man as a hero. In my opinion, this doesn't change the fact that it's totally ludicrous.

If anyone asked me (they probably won't), I think I'd say, don't read this book. According to Wikipedia it comes in, at about 645 000 words and 1056 bible-thin pages of miniscule print, just above A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. Set aside several months (assuming you want to continue your normal life at the same time) for A Suitable Boy instead, because it is far superior. Actually quite brilliant. Ayn Rand has written smaller books, such as The Fountainhead. I'd probably recommend reading one of them, because she's certainly memorable. Although I haven't read any of her other books, it's likely they'll be full of the same violent power, unrealistic characters and distinct lack of writing skill.

On Beauty: I find myself, for once, without much to say

Zadie Smith's book On Beauty is about two families on opposing sides of the culture war: The atheist, liberal Belseys and the ultra-religious, ultra-conservative Kipps' on the other. It's also about race and racial identity: black versus white and the influx of poor Haitian immigrants into Boston. It's about Howard Belsey's affair with an old friend of the family and his wife Kiki's means of dealing with it. It's about Kiki's developing friendship with Carlene Kipps, the wife of her husband's sworn enemy.

All in all, it's not my thing, but it's a stunning example of something that's not my thing. I don't go for domestic drama - I find it too mundane - but I quite enjoyed this one. That's really almost everything I have to say about it, the other things being somewhat tangential.

I really liked the dialogue. It's real, it's energetic, it's got heart. It's so strong you can almost hear the characters' voices in your head. On the other hand, I didn't think the characterisation was particularly good. I didn't have a clear picture of any of the characters by the end, which is pretty pathetic.

A culture divide, perhaps? I think it probably was. I couldn't take them seriously because they used the word 'totally' too often. Here in Melbourne, Australia we (or at least, the people I know) use 'totally' either in its original sense ('fully', 'completely') or as a joke, a parody of some American stereotype we don't really understand. Like "omg, you should, like, totally dye your hair orange! It would like soooooo great." Dripping with sarcasm. In On Beauty they use it liberally in the slang sense, which is similar to my example above, except minus the sarcasm. They're serious about it, but I can't take it seriously. It really put me off.

Then there's the whole black/white thing. The extent of the racial divide shocked me. Again, here in Melbourne NO ONE CARES. One could argue it's because there are very few black people, and that a similar thing happens between whites and Asians instead, but it was just weird for me. In On Beauty, no one could just be "a person". They had to be "a white person", "a black person". Like their race was just as important a factor as their status as a human being. That really distracted me too.

It was mainly those cultural thingies that interested me about the book. It was funny, I guess, and sometimes depressing, but not at all the sort of thing I'd usually read and rather disappointing considering its reputation.

Reviews:
Sydney Morning Herald
New York Times
The Oxonian
Slate

Margaret Drabble, Tracy Chevalier, Sarah Dunnant et al., please take note: This is good historical fiction!

Although it was unclear to me at first the extent to which Colm Tóibín's beautiful book The Master is historical fiction and to what extent it is biography. Whatever it is, I absolutely adore it.

I don't know much about Henry James (in fact, I'm somewhat ashamed to say I've never read any of his books - I'll get to it eventually I promise), but from reading some reviews, I get the impression that The Master is a whole lot of speculation based around a framework of real events. This doesn't actually bother me at all. I am fast coming to realise that characterisation may well be my favourite thing about literature, and I know from experience that filling in the gaps of what you don't know about a character in a way that may not be strictly true but is true to the personality of the character as you know them is one of the single most enjoyable and satisfying things you can do.

In relation to this, I'd like to quote this review from The Guardian:

How the books grow out of the life is the novel's deepest story. The phrase "I can imagine" crops up several times in the imaginary conversations. It irritated me, as it seemed so anomalous - but it's a clue to what Tóibín is doing. He shows us James's capacity for imagining his way in minute detail into, say, the state of mind of an abandoned child, his superhuman attention to "figures seen from a window or a doorway, a small gesture standing for a much larger relationship, something hidden suddenly revealed". Tóibín too "can imagine" his way into Henry James with exceptional attention - and, particularly, into the process of turning his own "personal store" of memories and relationships into fiction. Sometimes he allows himself simplistic biographical links, but at its best, the novel deals carefully and subtly with the complicated, mysterious process of how a novelist - above all, this master-novelist - goes about "masking and unmasking himself".

It is such a clear, if often unflattering, portrait of James that I feel like I know this man I had barely heard of before. He is gorgeously flawed. He is idealistic, selfish, snobbish, self-absorbed, self-justifying and so, so, so believable. I fell in love with his flaws again and again and again. It helps that he is also endlessly introspective. I adore introspection. I suspect I indulge in it far too often, but then perhaps so does Tóibín's James.

I have only two possible criticisms of this book, and I say 'possible' because I'm not entirely convinced that they are bad things. The first is an occasional tendency to lapse into sentimentality. I hate sentimentality, so I suppose it's telling that it barely grated at all in this case. To me it seemed to be in character, and I barely noticed it except occasionally when it maybe got a tiny, tiny bit out of hand. So tiny I can't even think of an example, which is pretty pathetic on my part and says a lot for the inconsequentiality of this criticism.

The second is that it is highly episodic. First he talks about the failure of James's play Guy Domville, but then he goes straight onto something else, I think it might have been James's relationship with his cousin Minny Temple. From there, on to something else. It frustrated me a bit. Some novel-reading part of me wanted it to have some common thread arching throughout. Although Guy Domville is portrayed as such a crucial event of James's life, it is only mentioned occasionally in the latter part (by which I mean almost all) of the book, and then only as a very, very marginal comment. I didn't sense that any of the episodes were more important or central than any others, though of course there are themes present throughout - the conflict between public and private life being an obvious one - but somehow I wanted at least one of the events to be more omnipresent.

The reason I wonder if this is really a criticism is because once again, it is true to life. Life is episodic. We have our temporary preoccupations, our transient obsessions. Something that seems monumental at the time will have receded into the minutiae of the past after a few days - weeks - months - years. It is rare for one event to dictate the course of one's life, and for this I doubt my own assessment.

I'd like to end on a quote from the book itself.

' "I view the historical novel as tainted by a fatal cheapness and if you want a statement from me on the matter... it would be all one word." Henry said. "One simple word. It would all be humbug!" '

I too have felt this intrinsic 'cheapness' of the historical fiction genre, and it is so all-pervasive that I have come to equate the two. Perhaps this is unfair. No matter. Simply rest assured that there is nothing whatsoever that is 'cheap' or 'humbug' about The Master.

The Sea - a funny title, but a good one in the end, I believe.

John Banville's novel The Sea won the Man Booker Prize in 2005. A good sign, thinketh-moi for I tend to like books that have won the Booker or Man Booker. This notwithstanding (I love that word!!!), it took me some time to get into this particular book, so long in fact that I didn't really start liking it until the very end. No matter - analysing a book is almost as good (or as bad) as actually reading it!

It's quite a short book. This guy called Max goes back to the scene of his childhood holidays by the sea, a place where he hung out with the Grace family, who were of a higher class than him. He fell in love, first with the mother, Connie Grace, and later with her daughter, Chloe. The account of these past events is interwven with his present life, living as a lodger in The Cedars, (the former Grace family home) and the tale of his wife's unspecified illness. The book ends, gorgeously, with her death.

Not for the first time, it's all about style. Banville's pretty big on the imagery, and he does it beautifully. It's easy to visualise what he's writing about because the images he paints are so clear. Unfortunately, I've felt a bit saturated by this style ever since I read The English Patient. I wanted things to be stated clear as crystal, but still be amazing, like Solzhenitsyn, Coetzee and Camus. At the time I believe I referred to it as "beautiful obscurity - a cheap magic trick.", which is rather inaccurate and unfair, because as I just explained, Banville's imagery cannot by any means be called obscure, or cheap.

So I think I finally got over this mental block with this book. It's really quite wonderful. This is one of my favourite bits:

"In my mind they were held suspended in a vast bright space, upright, their arms linked and their eyes wide open, gazing gravely before them into illimitable depths of light."

This is about two people who just walked into the sea and kept walking until they drowned. Isn't that just a perfect image, right there?

It took me a similarly long tome to get used to the title. The Sea. Such a nothing title, I thought. Such a cop-out. It's set by the sea, so what? But I eventually realised that, somehow, the image of the sea is the most important one in the book, in a way I can't quite put my finger on. I don't know if I can explain it, but I'll do my best: it's an image of infinity, of flatness, of grey monotony (no stormy or sunny weather in this book) which to me seemed like a brilliantly accurate metaphor for Max's life. It permeates everything, flowing through and giving everything this grey, distant flatness, like looking at everything through clear water at the rippled miniature sand dunes on the ocean's bottom.

One thing I liked right from the start was the characterisation. I honestly don't think I've ever read a book whose characters are so uniformly dislikeable. I hate them all, but I love their realism. These are characters you can believe in, because they are all so faulty that they couldn't possibly not exist. No Mary Sues in sight!

I'll finish on another of my favourite quotes, a memorable paradox about the existence of God:

"Given the world he created, it would be an impiety against God to believe in him."

In the Company of Cheerful Ladies:"It's sort of like... a mini-Macbeth!"

Alexander McCall Smith is now officially my hero. I'd read about three of his No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, but for some reason I didn't quite realise how brilliant they are until I listened to the audio book version of In the Company of Cheerful Ladies.

No doubt, much credit must go to Adjoa Andoh, for reading absolutely brilliantly. The accents were perfect, and she did a fantastic job portraying all the different characters.

I suppose I should give a potted summary: Mma Ramotswe is a detective. In fact, she is the senior detective at the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, where she works with her secretary and assistant detective, Mma Makutsi, and later with the assistant assistant detective Mr Potokwami, who is very cool. They share their workplace with Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, proprietor Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni. This book is about their trials and tribulations, including Mma Ramotswe's having to deal with a blackmailing former husband, Mma Makutsi's attempts to meet a man by going to a dancing class, Mr J. L. B. Matekoni's problems with his wayward apprentice, Charlie, and so on and so forth.

From the very start of the book, when Mma Ramotswe inadvertently squashes an unknown intruder who is hiding under her bed thanks to her "traditional" build, you just know that it's going to be warm, funny, and best of all - it's going to have a happy ending. Sometimes you just need a good happy ending.

One of the greatest things about it is the way it portrays Motswana people and life. I'm no authority on the matter - I have spent three weeks in Africa and didn't visit Botswana. I also don't want to assume that all African peoples are the same or similar, because I know they're not. However, from what I know and also what a friend from Botswana told me, it's a very accurate portrayal of life in that part of the world. When I was reading it, I could smell it - that scent of desert and dust and animals and people that just says to me Africa. It's a beautiful thing.

I just love everything about it. It meanders around, and you kind of want it to just get on with the plot from time to time, but the plot isn't the point, so it doesn't really matter. You welcome the long and fairly irrelevant digressions because they develop the characters more, and if you don't like brilliant characterisation then you're reading the wrong book.

My favourite quote is when Mma Ramotswe says to Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni "You are a very great mechanic, and that is enough for anybody." This quote embodies for me what is so very wonderful about this book. The characters don't aspire to money or power, they just want to do the very best they can do in everything they do. They are proud of their achievements and don't long to prove themselves to others. Mma Makutsi's pride in her score of 97% in the exams of the Botswana Secretarial College is an example.

It's a story of human decency. Good people, doing their best to be good people. Facing up to the bad things in the world and trying to make things better. Upon reading this book, I actually understood for the first time what forgiveness is all about. Mma Ramotswe finds it within herself to forgive the man who, when he was her husband, beat her and treated her terribly. Now he tries to blackmail her and destroy the life she has painstakingly built for herself. This scene literally brought tears to my eyes.

It's a feelgood story, that's for sure, but we all need one from time to time and it doesn't make it any less meaningful.