"The Miracle At Speedy Motors"

By Alexander McCall Smith

As always, a breezy joy to read, however I am discovering how the mysteries really are not the point of the books, and never were, and the author has ways of introducing people and things that just do not matter, but are. I do love how Mma Makusti shows a love, a guilty love, for shoes, and her shoes, the old ones begin to talk to her. About how she has become “too grand for us-after all we’ve done for you!” (43) On 89 we learn how after a rainstorm people can go out and catch flying ants (termites) and eat them, enjoying their peanut-butter taste and crunchiness.

A woman tells Mma. Ramotswe her story; she signals Mma. Makutsi to out “on the kettle. The telling of a story, like virtually everything in life, was always made all the easier by a cup of tea.”

On character talks about how the ancestors “are with us…They are all around us. What we have done. Their voices. The memories they have left us. All of that is there.” (57)

A scene of comfort: “Mrs. Moffat had taken her hand, for comfort, and they had sat there in silence for a long while. Sometimes it seemed as if the world itself was broken, that there was something wrong with all of us, something broken in such a way that it might not be put together again; but the holding of hands, human hand in human hand, could help, could help make the world seem less broken.” (96)

Finally, after a failed attempt for seek out a miracle for their physically disabled daughter, Mma. Ramotswe says to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni “It is not foolish to hope for miracles…No, it is not foolish, Rra. Not foolish at all. There are many miracles.” (213)