Reading disappointments

[flemmings]

I couldn't get into Alexander McCall Smith's Precious Ramotswe series. It felt just a bit... off? Condescending? Something oogey, whatever. But my bro gave me one of his Isabel Dalhousie mysteries, which went down much better. Sort of. Except, er well. Something just a bit off there too. Possibly the man shouldn't be shelved under mystery: I kept waiting for the crime to emerge and be solved, and it didn't and wasn't. And Isabel using moral philosophy to resolve purely emotional issues doesn't strike me as amusing, assuming it's supposed to. It made me want to tell her to face facts and get a grip.

Equally, the weird tales of Rudyard Kipling are far more unpleasant than I'd remembered, not for the weirdness but for the bland arrogance of the narrators. I keep hoping that they're meant to come off as morally reprehensible (I am not at all a subtle reader) but somehow I doubt it. When someone *is* morally reprehensible, such as the narrator of The Phantom Rickshaw, several people say so bluntly. Nothing of the sort happens in The Mark of the Beast or The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes. Then again, this webpage has corrective interpretations for the nonsubtle. 'Kipling has created a genuine Anglo-Indian nightmare, a vision of what it would be like to be one of the least of the ruled instead of one of the rulers.'

(And is the phantom rickshaw where paleaswater's soubriquet of Kitty Mannering came from?)

On an up note, Yoshimoto Banana's Lizard is marvellous: tales of people touched by grace, or whatever the non-Christian version of that is.

Comments

[kickinpants.livejournal.com]

There's a pretty good one-season tv show for the Precious series. It gets through the first few books. It's a nice show--great acting and cool scenery--so you might like it better than the books.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Maybe, since it gives work to black actors. My antsiness has to do with the vexed question of whether a white Scottish male should be publishing books about a black Botswanian female in the first place, since it makes it a tad less likely that anyone will then publish a book *by* a black Botswanian woman.

[paleaswater.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, nothing so obscure. Kitty Mannering is a character from a regency romance that my best friend in college wrote. The heroin's name was Jacqueline Mannering, and Kitty Mannering was the ditzy ingenue younger sister. I named all the characters, so I decided that I get to use them too. But now I can't remember the hero's name. Only that he had a side kick named Everett.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

The odd ways of coincidence, then. That's kind of cool.

Precious Ramotswe

[unearthly-calm.livejournal.com]

Condescending, definitely. I stopped reading when I hit the case where Precious has to decide who wins a beauty contest. It just seemed weirdly sexist and off-putting.

Re: Precious Ramotswe

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Oh good. It's not just me, then.