The Double Comfort Safari Club

The Double Comfort Safari Club
by Alexander McCall Smith
Recommended Ages: 13+

The eleventh book of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency confronts Mma Precious Ramotswe with three variations on the theme of an unhappy woman. One is a lady who wants proof that her husband is cheating on her, even though he isn't. Another is the domineering aunt of Mr. Phuti Radiphuti, fiance of assistant detective Mma Grace Makutsi, who refuses to let Mma Makutsi see him while he recovers from an accident that cost him part of one leg. Then there is Mma Makutsi's nemesis, Violet Sepotho, whose latest scheme may cost a well-meaning man his house, unless Mma Ramotswe can come up with a legal way around an iron-clad contract.

While the solution to one of these problems depends on the pushiness of orphan-farm matron Mma Sylvia Potokwane, it is the soft-hearted kindness of Mma Ramotswe that prevails in most circumstances. Mma Makutsi has an opportunity to appreciate the amazing gentleness of that lady as she sympathizes with the nastiest people, simply because they are unhappy.

The biggest case for the agency, however, is a matter of a very happy woman - an American lady who has recently become late, to borrow a whimsical phrase familiar from the earlier books in this Botswana-based series. Author McCall Smith, himself a native of Africa, finally gets around to explaining why this euphemism for death is used: it has a way of making one feel still connected to people who have passed away. The late American lady felt connected to a tour guide on an African safari, and now the executor of his will wants Mma Ramotswe's help finding that guide, so he can receive a gift of $3,000.

Mma Ramotswe's kindness makes her the right person for this happy mission, though it means a long and perilous journey into a remote part of Botswana, accompanied by her trusty assistant. Mma Makutsi, who often hears her shoes talking to her, was glad to come along on her first-ever business trip because it involved the purchase of a new pair of boots; but the chances of meeting a lion, or a panther, or a crocodile, or a hippo, leave her scared stiff while the boss tries to work out which tour guide deserves to inherit $3,000. Recognizing a good man proves to be easier than determining which one is the right man - but kindness, as always, finds a way.

The series continues to make me happy with its gentle wit, its descriptive exploration of previously unvisited scenery, and its unmocking portrayal of lovable characters who enjoy a somewhat simpler and more graceful life in this age of hurry and rudeness. There is an innocence about them that makes one feel protective of them, even though they have already borne experiences many of us are spared. It is a good series to read if you want to see a bigger world and to feel the concerns you live with are small indeed. Next in the sequence is The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party.

The Careful Use of Compliments

The Careful Use of Compliments
by Alexander McCall Smith
Recommended Ages: 14+

The fourth book in the Isabel Dalhousie series finds the 40-something Edinburgh-based philosopher bringing up a bonnie baby named Charlie, struggling to patch up her relationship with niece Cat after getting romantically involved with Cat's ex-boyfriend Jamie, responding to a palace coup on the editorial board of the Journal of Applied Ethics, and solving a mystery involving something a bit off about some art works by a deceased Scottish painter that recently went on sale.

More than some of the previous books in this series (sometimes described as "novels" rather than "mysteries"), this book really has a mystery in it, one with an unusually satisfying payoff for a mystery author who has trained his fans to accept and appreciate something other than a conventional whodunit. It also has some instances of Isabel behaving in ways that make one uncomfortable - not altogether admirable, heroine-type behavior, this go-round. She admits at the end, for example, that she turns out to have done the right thing - but until she saw the outcome, she wasn't sure it was so. The incidents in this book play up the conflict for Isabel between serving her interest and doing what is right, between her moral duty to help and a tendency to interfere. And sometimes her judgment isn't quite sound. The book leaves a lingering sense of ambiguity about how well its issues are settled.

Amid the squirming and wrestling with ethical puzzles, which one ought to expect in a book about a moral philosopher, there are pages of beautiful description of parts of Scotland the series hasn't visited before. These include the Isle of Jura, right up to the remote house where George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four, and a remote part of Perthshire too. The reader gazes through the lens of McCall Smith's compressed lyricism at one of the most dangerous stretches of water around the British Isles, and into the home lives of families that harbor secrets, guilt, and grudges. His prose opens a portal onto peaceful country scenes with mountain and ocean views and freshly scented air abuzz with insects, as well as the snug atmosphere of high-culture Edinburgh, a haunt of painters, writers, lawyers, and musicians; people who have housekeepers and private chefs, or who drop in on a delicatessen for focaccia with olives.

I suspect visiting this book's Scotland might be a journey of the imagination even for some people living in Scotland. But it is very soothing to the senses after a long day of ordinary work in an ordinary, small American town. It is like a touch of a rare herb giving a special savor to a mundane dish. In its low-key, rarely exciting way it both stimulates and relaxes, rewards the imagination and provides cultural and ethical food for thought. Next in the series is The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday, a.k.a. The Comfort of Saturdays.

196. Joshua Hymn

The full title of this number is "Joshua Hymn: For a Devout Heart." The tune I had in mind for it is O GOTT, DU FROMMER GOTT from Braunschweig, 1648. This particular "heroes of the faith"-type hymn is mainly drawn from one place in the Book of Joshua, his speech to the children of Israel in Joshua 24. I thought it was due for a little rescuing from the "Choose whom you will serve!" type of ditty that calls on the listener to make a decision for Christ. I can't help noticing, reading the text, that the only "choice" Joshua offers the children of Israel is to follow the false gods of Babylon and Canaan. In contrast to that, he actually tells them, "You cannot serve the Lord!"

Hark, children, at the word
Of Joshua’s exhorting;
Recall what you have heard
God’s messengers reporting!
Now, as in time of old,
He set at liberty
The people of His fold;
He brought us victory.

Behold, how rich a grace
To us has been extended!
What reason can we trace
For being thus befriended?
We did not sow the soil
Whereby our needs are met;
And yet, without our toil,
All good thereby we get.

With strong, extended arm
God worked all things to save us;
He held us free of harm,
Our trespasses forgave us;
A house, not built by hands,
He gave, that we may dwell
In richly fruited lands,
Made safe from sin and hell.

Now, Joshua so clear
A testimony hands us:
To serve the Lord with fear
He urgently commands us.
But if our hearts be loath
To heed his faithful voice,
We cannot serve them both—
True God and our own choice.

Forbid, O gracious Lord,
That we, false masters choosing,
May tumble by the board,
Your lovingkindness losing!
But let us rather say,
Like Joshua before:
You we will serve today,
Lifelong, and evermore!

The Right Attitude to Rain

The Right Attitude to Rain
by Alexander McCall Smith
Recommended Ages: 14+

In the third of what are now ten or eleven "Isabel Dalhousie novels," the Edinburgh-based editor of The Journal of Applied Ethics, takes an interest in an engaged couple from Texas visiting Scotland over the summer. She suspects Angie is after Tom's money first, and after Jamie, Isabel's good-looking young male friend, second; she is surprised to learn, later on, that Tom is attracted to her, Isabel. But after once again tottering on the line between performing her moral duty to a neighbor and nosing into other people's business, she must wonder whether her hasty judgment was part cause of a near-tragedy.

Meanwhile, Isabel's search for a flat to buy for her housekeeper Grace leads to a misunderstanding about her relationship to Jamie - the scorned ex-boyfriend of her niece Cat, on whom Isabel has long had a crush of her own. But their friendship suddenly flowers into a romance that she has long desired. She spends a lot of time worrying about how people will perceive their affair, since she is the older by 14 years; but everyone seems okay with it except, with surprising vehemence, Cat.

This installment has a lot of interesting developments for the series' recurring characters, including one at the end that comes as a real surprise. But the chief source of pleasure in reading it is to be around Isabel, with her quirky trains of thought, her meditations on proper behavior, her eye for the beauties of Scottish scenery, her ear for good Scottish poetry, her memory of the sordid details of Scottish history, and her nose for trouble. She feels a kinship toward the fox in her garden; she has a fondness for the shy young man who works in Cat's delicatessen; she has an old heartache in her past, and a new appreciation of her "sainted American mother's" flawed humanity; and she has, at last, the ability to overcome her cautious streak and do something spontaneous.

McCall Smith, also the author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series and numerous other books, jams a lot of Scotland into this one book, and each book in this series. It goes on in The Careful Use of Compliments.

Skellig

Skellig
by David Almond
Recommended Ages: 12+

I mentioned in my review of David Almond's excellent book Kit's Wilderness that the silver Michael L. Printz Honor Book medal is probably a better sale driver than the gold Printz Award itself, since I for one love many runners-up for that young adult fiction award, but almost never touch the winners. Well, this book, Skellig, is one of those lucky runners-up, and that silver medal is proudly embossed on its cover, at least in its American editions. But perhaps more importantly, it went for the gold in the Carnegie Medal race of 1998 - that's the highest award for children's literature in the U.K. Even more notably, it was named among the "70th Anniversary Top Ten" of that award in 2007. So it stands in some very classy company. Maybe they left that bit off the American covers just because the Printz Award is American. But I find it neat to think of this book in the company of Mary Norton's The Borrowers, Philippa Pearce's Tom's Midnight Garden, and Philip Pullman's Northern Lights (American Title: The Golden Compass).

Folks familiar with Kit's Wilderness may notice some shared themes between these two books, such as the image of a baby sister being held close to a teenaged brother's heart, and a preoccupation with aspects of the theory of evolution. Both books are examples of the young-adult strain of magical realism: stories that combine real-world settings and characters with strange phenomena, such as ghosts, fictional characters appearing in reality, and psychic communication.

In this book, a middle-school student named Michael is having trouble dealing with his family's move into a fixer-upper house in a strange new neighborhood, where he is now a bus ride away from his school and his football (soccer) friends; at the same time, his baby sister's serious illness puts a strain on the whole family. In a rebellious mood, he ignores his parents' warning to stay out of the rickety garage, which could collapse any moment. There, behind an abandoned chest of drawers, he discovers an extraordinary creature who eventually (Page 87 in my edition) admits that his name is Skellig.

Who or what Skellig is, Michael and Mina, the home-schooled girl down the street, can only guess. They only know they must keep him secret. They must move him to a safer place. And they must try to help him get better. Skellig seems to have given up on life, slouching in the darkness, eating spiders and mice, while suffering arthritis pain and general weakness. He's a funny fellow, though. He coughs up pellets of compacted fur and bone after eating small creatures, rather like the digestive byproducts of an owl. He is lighter than he looks, perhaps due to having hollow bones. Also, he has beautiful, white, feathery wings.

He could, Michael realizes, be the very thing his unnamed baby sister needs as she faces a critical heart operation. And she could be just what Skellig needs too.

Rich in emotion, full of family love, laced with quotations from William Blake and meaningful glances from a blackbird and a cat named Whisper, scented with the aroma of Chinese takeaway, and decorated with the art works of a couple of surprisingly talented kids - one of whom is also a killer footballer - this book deserves every carat of its Carnegie gold and may, if I may be excused for supposing it, have been robbed of the first-ever Printz award. It's a novel in which the unchallenged acceptance of the theory of evolution exists side-by-side with an equally unapologetic belief in angels. It is full of unexplained strangeness, touches of impulsive fun, interesting side characters, and a lean, sinewy grace that drives the dramatic momentum. It doesn't end a word late, and arrives at the finish line with plenty of the reader's attention to spare. And it now has a prequel, titled My Name Is Mina.

Kit's Wilderness

Kit's Wilderness
by David Almond
Recommended Ages: 12+

With this book, British author David Almond won the second-ever Michael L. Printz Award in 2001 from the Young Adult Library Services Association in the U.S., a year after being a runner-up for the same award with Skellig. Both books have been on my shelf of "award-winning fiction for young readers" for several years, like airplanes circling over O'Hare Airport, waiting for clearance to land. Their chance finally came during a weekend of sickness when I had nothing to do but lie on my back and wait for the next dose of medicine. I was happy to discover that this book wasn't about a lone boy's struggle to survive in a desolate wilderness, a type of story that I can only bear to read so often.

And in spite of being a title on the winners' list of an award whose other winners hold no interest for me, I realized quickly that I had fallen into the grip of a great story - the kind that is usually robbed of glory when the boring book awards are announced. For example, while this is my first time reading a Printz award winner, several of my favorite books are among its honorable mentions, including The Ropemaker by the late and lamented Peter Dickinson, The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer, Airborn by Kenneth Oppel, I Am the Messenger and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson, and The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey. I hate to hand it to the YALSA, but their silver "honor" medal is probably more of a selling point than their gold "award" one. This book may help sweeten my expectations of those top award winners.

So, Kit's Wilderness is very good for an award-winning book, and it's also not about a kid eating berries in the woods. Actually there is a subplot about a kid scratching a meager living out of the ground, sort of a story-within-a-story, but by the time that starts up, you're already hooked on a teen-friendly example of the up-and-coming genre known as magical realism. In adult fiction terms, that's the school of literature pioneered by Gabriel "Love in the Time of Cholera" García Márquez. In kid terms, it's a story set in a convincingly real English town, full of convincingly real characters (kids as well as grown-ups) with convincingly real problems; yet without taking away any of that, it's all shot through with paranormal weirdness and, well, magic.

Kit Watson, aged 13, is the new boy in Stoneygate, but his family goes way back in the town's history. Another Kit Watson, aged 13, died in a coal mine disaster about a hundred years ago, and present-day Kit's newly widowed grandpa still tells stories about working in those mines. Another present-day kid whose namesake, also aged 13, is listed on the mine disaster memorial is John Askew, a burly, surly type who has some pretty dark ideas. Imagine a loner who goes everywhere with a vicious dog at his heels, who gathers a clique of misfits around him to play a disturbing game called Death. Kit gets pulled into it, partly by a fascination with the repellant yet magnetic Askew, partly to chase a cute girl named Allie. But things get out of control for young Askew and he ends up first expelled from school, then running away.

Kit, meanwhile, is increasingly distracted by visions of ghostly children, spirits of those buried deep in the coal tunnels. Besides this, he has to deal with his grandpa's decline into dementia, and a story he is writing for school that becomes so real to him, its characters spill out into reality. The weirdness builds with an urgency of purpose, until it seems the only way to save John, Grandpa, and an ice-age hero named Lek is to save them all at once. And for Kit, that means descending into a terrifying, ancient darkness.

This is a very strange book. It is a strangely wonderful book. It is a wonderfully dark book. It is a darkly beautiful book. It is in that rare and treasured category of books that made me laugh and sob, repeatedly. It is a book whose layered complexity could have come across as tortured and artificial, but that instead manages to convey a powerful natural unity through images, phrases, and ideas that cycle round and round, building up to cyclone force. It is such a strong book that I actually took a break from reading it to ransack my book collection until I made sure I also had Skellig - which I then read the same evening. And I now want to read more by David Almond, whose titles include The Boy Who Climbed into the Moon and The Boy Who Swam with Piranhas.

Two Robbie Stories

These stories happened to me last week. My mother would love them.

---

Robbie and the Blocked Toilet

You know you're going to have a nasty experience when the plumber's advice over the phone begins, "First, put down some towels." On the occasion of a persistently blocked toilet a few nights ago, my local plumber went on to say, "Then ride that plunger like it's a pogo-stick."

As he predicted, the contents of the toilet went everywhere. I mean everywhere. Poop, toilet paper, water, and mostly an indistinguishable melange of the three - everywhere. I didn't put down enough towels. I could not have.

It was a hideous experience. The cleanup took ages. I ended up throwing out the shirt I was wearing and about six of my older bath towels, including the two that have been serving as beds for my cats, after mopping up the gross stuff with them. Then I mopped the floor with Pine Sol. Then I Swiffer Wet mopped it. Then I Swiffer Dry mopped it. I also showered and changed clothes.

Somewhere in this horror, the truly crowning calamity happened. The bath rug, that I had first rolled out of the way during the early stages of my plumbing ordeal and later draped over the side of the tub, had to be transferred to the shower curtain rod to keep it out of the way - and as I did so, something dripped out of it and hit me in the face. In my open mouth and eyes, to boot.

I have no idea what that liquid was. I hope it was just water that splashed out of the mop bucket when I filled it in the tub. Luckily, I'm on antibiotics now (for an unrelated condition).

---

Robbie and the Inhaler

I've been sick for an entire week now. I came down with symptoms last Saturday night. Church was canceled Sunday due to icy road conditions, so I stayed in bed through most of the day. I had a demanding work week, never making it home earlier than 8:30 p.m. between Monday and Wednesday and an hour later than that at least one night. I wasn't getting well.

In fact, I had a couple really rough nights when, for a while at least, the effort of breathing became so great that I thought I might have pneumonia. I packed my overnight bag one night and was going to the office to use the internet to help me decide which hospital to go to, but the cold air made me feel a little better, so I decided to go to Walmart instead and buy some over-the-counter stuff. You know: Theraflu, Vaporub, that kind of thing.

The Versailles Walmart looked dark and abandoned. I didn't think it was open, so I drove to the somewhat larger village of Eldon, a good 18 miles away - only to learn that its Walmart was definitely closed at that time of night. I tried a convenience store on the way home, but they didn't have what I wanted either. I ended up going home with nothing to show for my trip but a full tank of gas.

I felt really stupid the next day when my boss told me the Versailles Walmart is open 24 hours a day.

I took Thursday off to lie in bed and try to heal - with Theraflu, Vaporub, and the rest this time - but I was still ill on Friday. So my boss and co-workers ganged up on me and sent me to the doctor.

Now, I've never visited a doctor since I moved out to these parts. I had to choose a primary care physician when I signed up for health insurance, but I had never visited her. When I called her office Friday, her receptionist said she was too busy to see new patients. So I had to go to Urgent Care in Eldon.

The doc there tested me for the flu, but the test was negative. She saw some redness in my mouth, though, and heard some congestion in my lungs. So she decided I have bronchitis - it's always bronchitis! - and sent a script for an inhaler (albuterol), a steroid (prednisone), and an antibiotic (azithromicin) to the Walmart pharmacy in Versailles.

When I got there, the pharmacist who helped me noted my insurance wouldn't cover the inhaler I was prescribed. She then said something about how "the one that your insurance does cover, we don't have in stock," before adding that the steroid would be no problem. In a classic case of miscommunication, I thought she was telling me the antibiotic wasn't in stock, so all I would be able to get was the steroid - and that was the one I cared least about. So I said forget it, and went back to work empty-handed.

My co-workers prevailed on me to have the Urgent Care clinic send my antibiotic script to a different pharmacy, where I picked it up and started at least that course of meds. After work I went to Walmart a second time, just to see how much it would cost me to get the other two drugs - but the inhaler was going to cost me $60 out of pocket, so I decided again not to bother.

Then came that time of night when breathing became so difficult that I wasn't sure I was going to survive without the meds the doctor ordered for me. So I went to Walmart a third time and told them I was going for it. This time a different pharmacist dealt with me, and she cleared up the miscommunication that happened earlier. What the other girl meant by that remark about "the one that your insurance does cover," was that an alternate brand of inhaler existed that my insurance would have paid for - but it was on factory back-order. The pharmacist I spoke to later told me it was too late to call the insurance company now, but if they did call to tell them they had this brand of inhaler, the company would cover it; but since they didn't have it, the company would probably say, "Our database shows they have this inhaler in stock in Oshkosh. You should drive there to pick it up." Oshkosh, by the way, is more than 500 miles away.

I told the pharmacist, "It's as if they think breathing is an elective procedure." She laughed. I would have joined her, but at that point I was so out of breath that I had to lean against the counter to stay upright. I was actually light-headed.

So I took that $60 inhaler home (along with a steroid that, I kid you not, cost me $2 and change), pulled it out of the package and gave it a shake. And because no Robbie story is complete without a final twist, the bottle containing this life-saving, $60-out-of-pocket drug flew out of the dispenser and landed on the floor.

Don't look at me like that. I've never done an inhaler before. It was my first time, and I didn't know how to hold it. It took me several light-headed minutes to figure out how to put the bottle back in the holder, remove the lid over the mouthpiece, and give myself the first dose of what I can already tell is worth every penny. I'm so glad that bottle didn't break!