"In the Company of Cheerful Ladies"

In the Company of Cheerful Ladies
By Alexander McCall Smith

Smith continues to write about nothing, yet everything, at the same time. He has allowed his characters to continue developing. Mma. Makutsi solves a case; get a 25% commission and goes out to buy new shoes (with a buckle that will attract men’s attention!). She also finds love and in the touching last scene, is proposed to, although in a rather unusual way.

Mma. Ramotswe goes toe to toe with her abusive ex husband, Note, and temporarily faces the reality that her van has been stolen. There is also the addition of Mr. Polopsti, a man wrongly jailed who can not get a job…until the day Mma. Ramotswe hits him with her little white van and convinces Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni to give him a job.

The soul comes pouring out on the last page, when Mma. Makusti, glowing over her marriage proposal thinks about love. “She had so much love to give-she had always felt that- and now there was somebody to whom she could give this love, and that, she knew, was good; for that is what redeems us, that is what makes our pain and sorrow bearable- this giving of love to others, this sharing of the heart.”