Tag: Reviews

#BookReview Love After Love by Ingrid Persaud @FaberBooks

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Love After LoveAbout the Book

Irrepressible Betty Ramdin, her shy son Solo and their marvellous lodger, Mr Chetan, form an unconventional household. Happy in their differences, they build a home together.

Home: the place keeping these three safe from an increasingly dangerous world – until the night when a glass of rum, a heart-to-heart and a terrible truth explodes the family unit, driving them apart.

Format: Paperback (410 pages)         Publisher: Faber
Publication date: 14th January 2021 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

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My Review

Winner of the Costa First Novel Award in 2020, Love After Love is the touching story of two rather lonely souls – Betty Ramdin and Mr Chetan, and Betty’s son Solo.  Betty is a widow who experienced violence during her marriage. Solo feels the absence of a father and is withdrawn and friendless. Mr Chetan has secrets of his own and longs to be part of family.  Through mutual affection and laughter, the three of them form a happy household unit. As Mr Chetan observes, ‘People have all kind of families’.  Unfortunately their amiable arrangement doesn’t last and Betty finds herself estranged from her son.

Over the course of several years, events in the lives of Betty, Solo and Mr Chetan encompass topics such as the plight of undocumented migrants in the United States, racial and sexual discrimination, and mental illness. The book explores whether a terrible act, even if carried out in order to protect another, can ever be forgiven and whether bonds which seem broken irrevocably can ever be mended.

The three characters are so well-drawn that it’s impossible not to feel both sympathy for – and, at times, frustration with – each of them as they face their different personal struggles, their disappointments and their shattered dreams. I found Mr Chetan’s story particularly affecting. I’ll admit to shedding tears at one point and silently begging the author, ‘No, you can’t do that!’  As Betty reflects, ‘We are forever getting more than we can bear. Always’.

Although it took me a while to adjust to the use of patois and the rhythm of the prose, it really brought the story alive and I enjoyed being introduced to Trinidadian idioms such as ‘I don’t want to put goat mouth on it’, ‘Every bread has its cheese’ or ‘Monkey know which tree to climb’.  (Sorry, you’ll have to look them up if you can’t work them out for yourself!) I also loved learning about the food, customs and culture of Trinidad.

Love After Love has been languishing in my TBR pile for several months and it was only because I needed a book to match a category in the What’s In A Name Challenge 2021 that I took it down from the bookshelf. I’m so glad I did. At times heart-warming and at others heart-breaking, I absolutely adored Love After Love and I can understand why it has garnered so much praise from readers.

In three words: Emotional, immersive, tender

Try something similar: This Lovely City by Louise Hare

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Ingrid PersaudAbout the Author

Born in Trinidad, Ingrid Persaud won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2017 and the BBC National Short Story Award in 2018. She read law at the LSE and was an academic before studying fine art at Goldsmiths and Central Saint Martins. Her writing has appeared in Granta, Prospect, the Guardian, the Independent, National Geographic, Five Dials and Pree magazines. She lives in London. (Photo: Twitter profile)

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#BookReview Blue Shoes and Happiness by Alexander McCall Smith

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Blue Shoes and HappinessAbout the Book

Mma Ramotswe is happily married to Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, but her work seems more hectic than ever. Among the raft of cases coming the way of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency are blackmail, witchcraft and theft, all calling for the wisdom of a traditionally built detective.

It’s enough to make her wonder what the secret of happiness is, and whether she is right to find it in small things such as a pair of blue shoes, a slice of cake, or a red sunset over Kalahari.

Format: Paperback (250 pages)        Publisher: Abacus
Publication date:  13th March 2007 Genre: Crime

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Hive | Amazon UK
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My Review

Blue Shoes and Happiness is the seventh book in the author’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. I was an avid reader of the series when it began but somehow other books got in the way and I’m now way behind as the author has just published book twenty-two in the series and there is another one on the way in 2022!  Although for sheer enjoyment ideally you’d want to read from the beginning, I think it’s possible to come to the series at any point as the author is skilled at unobtrusively incorporating background details about the characters and previous events.

For my part, it was a complete delight to be reunited with the lovely main characters: the ‘traditionally built’ Mma Ramotswe, her gentle husband Mr. J. L. B. Maketoni (only Mma Ramotswe knows what those initials stand for) and Mma Makutsi, Mma Ramotswe’s assistant, whose love of shoes gives the book its title.

Mma Ramotswe’s down-to-earth wisdom and pithy observations contribute to the book’s gentle humour. Her keen eye for detail and ability to get people to talk are a key part of her success as a private detective, along with the guidance to be found in her cherished reference book, The Principles of Detection by Clovis Anderson. Frequent cups of her favourite bush tea also help in solving the cases that come to her. As Mma Ramotswe observes, ‘Most problems could be diminished by the drinking of tea and the thinking through of things that could be done while tea was being drunk. And even if that did not solve problems, at least it could put them off for a little while, which we sometimes needed to do, we really did’.  

One of the things that has endeared so many people to the series, including me, is the way in which the author’s love and admiration for Botswana – the country and its people – shines through the stories. Often it’s through family links that Mma Ramtoswe makes her breakthroughs. As described in the book, the ‘Botswana way’ is built on ‘ties of kinship, no matter how attentuated by distance or time, [that] linked one person to another, weaving across the country a human blanket of love and community. And in the fibres of that blanket there were threads of obligation that meant that one could not ignore the claims of others’. I think we could all do with a human blanket of love and community in present times.

Blue Shoes and Happiness is the sort of book that leaves you with a warm feeling at the end. ‘Happiness was an elusive thing. It had something to do with having beautiful shoes, sometimes; but it was about so much else. About a country. About a people.’ Does Mma Ramotswe solve the raft of cases she’s faced with in the book? Of course she does, and in ways that only she can.

In three words: Charming, humorous, uplifting

Try something similar: Madam Tulip by David Ahern

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Alexander McCall Smith

About the Author

Alexander McCall Smith is the author of over one hundred books on a wide array of subjects, including the award-winning The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. He is also the author of the Isabel Dalhousie novels and the world’s longest-running serial novel, 44 Scotland Street. His books have been translated into forty-six languages.

Alexander McCall Smith is Professor Emeritus of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh and holds honorary doctorates from thirteen universities. (Photo: Goodreads author page)

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