The Miracle at Speedy Motors, Alexander McCall Smith

Tebogo Mogapi, The Gaborone Raid, June 14, 1985

(June 19) More along the lines of the last three -- interesting puzzles, eccentric people, plenty of ethics-wrangling. Nice and open-ended so there can be more.

McCall Smith has a lot of fun with chapter titles and a flamboyant bed purchased by Mma Makutsi.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Lisa See

An Ho, Wang Xifeng

(June 14) I really enjoyed this “autobiography” of a girl growing up in the hinterlands of 19th-century China. Like Memoirs of a Geisha, The Far Pavilions, I, Claudius, even Gone with the Wind, it seems to create a vivid, you-are-there experience of life in an exotic culture and a remote time. It’s the combination of (1) the sense that the author has done exhaustive research into the time and culture and (2) the intimacy of the first-person narration.

Lisa See is particularly good at providing “the insider view” -- the narrator does not seem to be explaining her culture to foreigners, she’s assuming the customs and motivations are already familiar; she’s unconscious to her culture, as we all are. As a BookCel member says, “the protagonist does not appear to be a 21st-century feminist playing period dress-up.”

And the details about foot-binding, family structures, nu shu, laotong relationships, marriage customs, economics and more are fascinating. It’s all women culture, but the way it’s presented, so vividly and devotedly, undermines any knee-jerk-feminist disapproval one might harbour about apparently misogynistic customs. You may have found it unbelievable that women put up with the mutilation of their feet, and See is not an apologist, but Snow Flower and the Secret Fan makes you appreciate how the pressures of culture are irresistible, and sometimes even yield rewards.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter, Kim Edwards

Heather Spears, Drawing of a Child with Down Syndrome

(June 10) This was one of those completely-don’t-get-it books for me. It was a #1 New York Times Bestseller and there are many on-line reviews in which readers rave about the book and list it as one of the three best books of the year or one of their Top 10 of all time... and I can’t see the enthusiasm at all. There are books I don’t like well but can still see why others would like them a lot, but this is not one of those. This is a book that you might grudgingly finish reading because it opens so well and you hope that the writer will rise to the occasion again... but she never does, so you finish the book with the writer greatly in your debt. You can forgive her and just lick your wounds, but you can’t rave about that book and rank it high.

The first chapter would have made a cool short story. The author did a really virtuoso job of weaving in a lot of camera science and technology as metaphors. These things made me give her the benefit of the doubt. But it was kind of a timid novel, never getting out of two dimensions, and I looked at my watch the whole time I read it.