Boy George warbled about one, Smokey Robinson was ably assisted by five of them, and depending on one’s religious beliefs,
a chap with long hair and a beard performed them on a regular basis, arguably the best-known of which was to turn five loaves and two fishes into a meal fit for a five thousand-strong mob. I’m talking about miracles, of course, but what really constitutes a miracle? The dictionary defines it as an ‘extraordinary or improbable event which is inexplicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the result of divine intervention’, and that’s certainly our perception when we talk about ‘miracle cures’ for otherwise incurable illnesses and conditions. But can the term be used legitimately to describe less remarkable happenings or do we have a tendency to bandy it about a little too freely so as to devalue its real meaning? Perhaps it rather depends on the expectations of the individual, for something which one person might regard as a miracle may well appear as little more than an everyday event in the eyes of another.
There’s no doubt that Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, proprietor of Tlokweng Speedy Motors and loyal husband of Precious Ramotswe - Botswana’s most famous (and possibly only) lady
detective - is hoping for a miracle in the literal sense when he arranges to take their adopted daughter Motholeli to Johannesburg in search of a cure for the paralysis which they have been told will confine her to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. So convinced is he that the opportunity is too good to miss, that he mortgages the garage in order to raise the money for the consultation, and in doing so, he puts not only the future of Speedy Motors at risk, but also that of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, with which it shares its premises.
And Mma Makutsi, she of the difficult skin and large glasses, and affianced to the wealthy owner of the Double Comfort Furniture Shop, needs some sort of assistance, divine or otherwise, to extricate her from a potentially sticky situation involving the fate of their newly-purchased matrimonial (to-be) bed with its red velvet heart-shaped headboard.
There’s a distinct aura of darkness about this, the ninth book in the series centred on the traditionally-built Botswanan lady detective, a sense of sadness and despondency that hasn’t perhaps been in evidence in previous volumes, where life has tended to drift by relatively uneventfully, and where everything usually turns out alright in the end. Mma Ramotswe is troubled on a number of fronts, the issue of the Johannesburg trip being foremost in her mind, naturally, but there’s also the disturbing matter of a series of
poison-pen letters, with circumstantial evidence pointing uncomfortably to the author being a person she had previously considered to be a friend. Added to which, her latest case is causing her to dwell on memories from the past - some happy, others more painful - and it’s with a heavy heart that she has to make what is possibly the hardest decision of her life so far.
As perverse at it sounds, the melancholy atmosphere hovering in the background of this instalment of Botswana’s own soap opera comes as an almost refreshing change to the air of bonhomie and optimism prevailing in previous volumes, which might otherwise have begun to seem a little stale and overworked. Nobody would begrudge the normally cheerful Mma Ramotswe a happy and peaceful existence of course, but as we know, life isn’t always perceived through rose-tinted glasses (or even the blue-framed pair recently acquired by Mma Makutsi), and to witness Mma Ramotswe dealing, not always successfully, with the problems she faces, is to see her in a different light, a more realistic one, perhaps.
It’s a time for contemplation, for consolidation and for reflection at Tlokweng Road, and author Alexander McCall Smith has probably chosen the right time to introduce a slightly different slant to the proceedings. This book is a little darker than the others and whilst it’s no less satisfying a read, it has a touch less of the feel-good factor about it, with the humour not quite as apparent as it has been in the past. The effect, curiously, is to give the series a greater depth, and you sense that Mma Ramotswe and her friends will get through regardless, as they always do, emerging all the wiser from their experiences. For all that, it does have its lighter moments, including the hunting down of a suspect, a woman eventually identified by the shape of her rear end by Charlie, the girl-mad apprentice mechanic from Speedy Motors. So despite this book being somewhat less light-hearted than its predecessors, it isn’t a tale laden with gloom by any means.
So, does anybody get the miracle they were hoping for? Well, that takes us back to the beginning, to the question of what a miracle actually consists of. It isn’t for me to answer that question, firstly because if I do, then you won’t need to read the book, and secondly, because your idea of a miracle may not be the same as mine. It’s all a matter of opinion, and I’ll leave you to decide for yourself