What is unusual, writes Dalrymple, about the implied plea for simplicity in Alexander McCall Smith’s Mma Ramotswe series of books
is that they are amusing rather than earnest. And for the time that we are reading them, we are transported to that simpler life, as if we were leading it ourselves for a time.
It comes as a relief, he says, harried as we are by
- finding a place to park
- taxes
- worry about identity theft
- appointments
- unfinished work
- phone calls
- leaks in the roof
- the proliferation of PIN numbers that we cannot remember
- booking journeys
- repairs
- forms to fill
- the psychological problems of others
- text messages
- the drug dealers in the street
- 24-hour news
- correspondence
- what to do about our savings
- timetables
- the decline in public standards
- the proliferation of passwords
