Since I have devotedly followed the entire No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series and mildly enjoyed a handful of other McCall Smith novels too, I was delighted to find he has placed this new one in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), which meant, I just had to read it, of course!
I did not expect it to be full of local colour or Sri Lankan culture or politics, which is as well, because it is about a Scottish colonial family in their tea plantation, living the expatriate life (privileges, tennis with other expats, the club, etc). But where there was some mention of locals as servants and managers and tea pickers (Tamils, Singhalese, the religions, etc) for backdrop and setting; it all seemed reasonably well informed, and not overly exoticised.
The storyline for at least three quarters of the novel, is set in the Fergusons’ tea estate in Nuwara Eliya, where Henry and Virginia settle after marriage and have a single child, the precocious, imaginative Bella. Virginia was born in Scotland, was brought to Colombo, in then Ceylon, when she was three; sent back to Britain for education at 8 years of age, and returned to Ceylon at 18. After several boyfriends, she realises she has to settle for someone if she is not to end up on the shelf, and marries Henry, a widower 12 years senior to her, whom she likes very much and comes to love, but is not in love with. They buy a tea estate in the hill country and after 2 years, they have Bella, who is 8 years old at the time of telling.
At eight, not quite nine, Bella is nearly old enough to be sent back to Britain for her education, but meanwhile, the Fergusons engage a governess for Bella, Lavender White. Miss White, is, of course, in time-honoured tradition, the fly in the ointment, the one who seemingly spoils paradise for this little family. Isolated as they all are in vast plantations and spread thin, there is too much idle time on Virginia’s hands, leaving her to worry if the governess has designs on her husband, or worse.
You had to be careful. This beguiling country, with its hills and its skies and its vegetation, so green and intense that it could drive you crazy – it had happened before, is had happened before and it would happen again. She would not let it happen to her.
p164
The story unfolds of some near-misses and accidents which cause the Fergusons concern, and bring matters to a head. It is a domestic little whodunnit in a sense, focusing on how the situation plays out with this constrained cast of characters. There are occasional nods in the politically correct direction of the 21st century, though Virginia’s sentiments may not necessarily have been commonplace in the 1930s:
They had no right to order these people about – she at least understood that even if none of the others, none of the planters or their wives, understood that. We are uninvited guests, just as we are uninvited guests in every corner of the globe; and yet we take it upon ourselves to dictate how things should be done. That was the massive, almost unbelievable conceit, upon which the whole colonial enterprise was built, and yet which nobody seemed to see. […] in a place that was alien, however much you built your bungalows or planted your gardens. […] It did not belong to you. Nothing really belonged to you. You thought you could make it yours, but you were wrong.
p106-7
It is not just sentiments for Virginia, she is quite keen to move her family back to Scotland, where she feels they belong, despite the idyllic life in Ceylon.
The novel is a quietly delightful one, seen through Virginia’s eyes at times, and sometimes through Bella’s eyes, with that half-comprehension of a child, which makes adults and happenings slightly baffling. It is very much of its period, and Bella’s life and memories and childhood must be quite similar to that of many expatriate British families who lived out in the colonies at that time, before the war intervened, and then after the war, repatriation. It captures a world which now looks like a beautiful soap bubble, contained and fragile. It is a narrative characterised by McCall’s Smith trademark gentleness of handling, his ability to pick out human foibles and fears without mocking them, his appreciation of the colonies in a way which is sadly unlikely to have been shared by the colonisers. A novel which is not earth-shaking, but still a joy to engage with.
Looking forward to reading this one! I think I’ve read all the Botswana books, and there was a definite drop in quality in the middle ones, although the most recent seem to be back on form. Still, I’m glad he is branching out.
He has branched out to a lot of other novels and even other series – some are quite fun, some are more detectives, the Scotland series you already know, and he has a lot of stand alone books too, and even short story collections. I find his writing always easy to read, with some charm, and if not scintillating, there is always a quiet pleasure to be found in most of his stuff. But sometimes, maybe it is just me, but I find he can go on a bit! That said, his oeuvre is massive – cannot believe one man has time to write so many books as well as do so many other things in his life!
I wonder that too! Do you think he might have a staff, one of whom is assigned to work on each series? Ian Fleming and Tom Clancy, both quite prolific, are supposed to have used ghostwriters.
Wikipedia says: ‘He writes at a prodigious rate: “Even when travelling, he never loses a day, turning out between 2,000 and 3,000 words [a day] – but more like 5,000 words when at home in Edinburgh.
Well then, if he can produce 5k words a day, I am maligning him with this talk of ghostwriters. Still, there were definitely some books there that seemed to have missed the context of the previous ones, as if they were written quite independently by someone who had the general idea but had not read all of them.