Customer Reviews

The Girl Who Married a Lion: and Other Tales from Africa (Random House Large Print)

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Those familiar with Precious Ramotswe can easily imagine her listening to the tales from this delightful collection. Relaxing after a day's work as No. 1 Ladies' Detective with a cup of bush tea, her mind might wander back to the stories of her childhood. Those new to McCall Smith's books will find in "The Girl Who Married a Lion" an excellent introduction into the gentle and caring world of Mma Ramotswe and her friends. The same warmth and affection that McCall Smith conveyed through his Botswana series has found expression in this latest book. It is a real treasure.

Folk tales in any culture, told and retold from one generation to the next, have special meaning within and beyond their geographic beginnings. They often combine the best of humanity's wisdoms with the local flair of their original source. Sometimes they are revealing, tongue in cheek irony, usually reflecting on one or the other human weakness or strength. They end with a gentle lesson in morality and local customs. The tales in this collection from one particular region of Africa are no different. As in fables everywhere, animals can speak and/or disguise themselves as humans; good and evil spirits test the resolve of the brave and award the deserving. While we might recognize some themes and characters, such as the hare or the tortoise, in all tales the African context shines through very strongly. We hear about a colourful bird that gives milk to sustain a poor family. In another, "children of wax" shape their restless brother into a bird to help him explore life during the hot sunny day. Or crocodiles that are feeling pity for a young girl too weak to carry the calabashes for the daily water needs of her family.

McCall Smith always finds the right tone, the proper nuances and illuminating details to bring the stories alive within their culture and environment. He has been collecting these tales, told to him over decades while living in Botswana and in what is now Zimbabwe. His sensitive retelling them for us conveys the local context vividly. Adding some detail on a landscape here or on a different local custom there makes his narratives rich reading. Enjoy this heart-warming treasure of a book, share it with your children and friends and explore this glimpse of an African vision. [Friederike Knabe]

Alexander McCall Smith has become a bestselling author for his fictional "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" set in Botswana, Africa. In "The Girl Who Married a Lion," Smith retells several stories he has personally collected or received from friends in his beloved African countries, Botswana and Zimbabwe. To date, most African folklore collections have been scholarly, intended primarily for the armchair or scholarly folklorist, not the general public. In contrast, these tales are not presented with lots of scholarly notes and histories, but as an end unto themselves. I would have enjoyed a little more backstory to the tales, but they are presented with a warmth and respect that is often lacking in more scholarly folklore collections.

For fans of Smith's bestselling series, the tales offer another view of Precious Ramotswe's world, an intriguing journey into its folklore, blantantly exploited by the publisher with the inclusion of an additional introduction to the collection by the fictional Mma Ramotswe. While the Ramotswe introduction is charming, it threatens the validity of the collection as a folklore collection, reminding the reader that this collection hopes to capitalize on that series' success.

Despite, and even because of all of this, the book is a worthwhile read, presenting deceptively simple stories from an often overlooked part of the world. Most of the 40 tales have been published previously (see Smith's "Children of Wax"), but seven of them are unique to this new collection. Whether you read the book because you are a fan of Mma Ramotswe or because you love folklore, you will not be disappointed as you enjoy the stories of tricksters, animals, and even a cannibal or two.

Every culture has marvelous stories that display keen insight, deep wisdom and the values of the community. Usually, the best of these stories are kept in oral form and are transmitted from generation to generation with love as a way to creating a common bond.

When Westerners run into such non-Western stories, they usually want to share them with others as well. How should one do that? You can be very literal and just type out what a story teller says. But the stories often don't make sense without some appreciation of the culture. Some authors will add footnotes to fill in those gaps. Alexander McCall Smith takes a different tack; he rewrites these stories from Zimbabwe and Botswana to make them more like Western stories. As a result, these stories come across almost like Aesop's fables. The experience is an enjoyable one.

The stories are introduced by a letter from the fictional Precious Ramotswe from The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. She relates that these stories were told to her by her aged aunt when Precious was a child. She says the stories initially make her sad, not because they are sad stories but "because they remind me of the Africa of my childhood and all the good things that there were then." But her feeling of sadness lifts when she realizes that she is lucky to remember those days at all.

Each story is quite brief. It's a magical time when animals could speak and the distinction between humans, animals and inanimate objects didn't exist.

The stories deal with common problems such as how farming should be conducted successfully, how a community should share food and water during a drought, how husbands and wives should meet one another, how families should cooperate and how trouble should be dealt with. In many cases, there are no humans in the stories. Those stories often involve hares and the parallels to Brer Rabbit and his briar patch will be lost on few readers. The stories are full of tricksters of the sort the Navajo stories and Greek legends emphasize.

One of the most delightful aspects of the stories is that differences are usually examined for their potential strengths, rather than being condemned on the face of them. These stories will remind readers of The Ugly Duckling.

There's also a strong sense of cosmic justice in the stories. I liked those tales the best. Here are some of my favorites employing this theme: Guinea Fowl Child; A Bad Way to Treat Friends; Hare Fools the Baboons; Pumpkin; Sister of Bones; Children of Wax; Brave Hunter; A Tree to Sing to; Strange Animal; and Two Bad Friends.

I enjoyed every story in the book in one way or another.

I suggest that you space out the reading so that the stories can simmer in your unconscious mind. In that way, you will be continually better able to absorb and appreciate the stories as you continue with them.

May your water hole be full and not muddy!

In this collection of short stories, Smith captures in print, what has lived for generations of oral African tradition. These stories of the homeland of Africa tell of animals and trees; clear water and clear skies; harmony and spirituality: but also of ethics and morality. It is difficult not to think about Rudyard Kipling's "Just So Stories" as the lessons learned in both sets of stories are often similar. Yet Smith's renditions are much more at one with nature and the environment than Kipling's.

In this short book containing 33 distinct stories, Smith has chosen those which tell a story and a lesson in the clearest and most concise manner. Subjects such as jealousy, beauty and selfishness are fully covered. The lessons of courage and the despair of hubris are taught with aplomb. The messages of deceit are well illustrated and its consequences well articulated.

Additionally, no subject is off bounds for McCall Smith as one of his stories casually talks about the Evolutionary development of baboons ("The Baboons Who Went This Way And That"). Clearly on a subject like that, Smith leaves it to the reader to make up their own minds. But whatever your belief system, Smith's book is evocative. It does ask the reader to examine himself and examine others, and compare them to the metaphoric archetypes that Smith provides a glimpse of in these stories.

Once again, Alexander McCall Smith creates a work that both entertains and educates. And this one can be read to people of any age, from 1 to 110. It is truly a marvelous collection of stories that once only traveled by word of mouth. Any reader can enjoy this book.

This collection of stories from Zimbabwe and Botswana is fun to read and yields insight into the storytelling culture of southern Africa. I've already re-told several of the stories to friends, who have enjoyed them. (Two favorites are the first story, about a guinea fowl who becomes the child of a childless woman; and one about a turtle farmer and a snail trader whose friendship falls upon hard times.)

These stories would be wonderful to read aloud to children, and in addition to the suspense and action of the stories, the distinctness from most American stories is interesting: animals turn into people and trees grow out of a man's head, all without explanation. Whereas American stories would have to attribute these events to magic (or wacky science), the folk magic here is assumed. These stories also have strong morals, from the superficial (Don't reject your daughter, even if she's smelly) to the more fundamental (People who trick others out of money pay in the end).

I heartily recommend the audio version of this book, which has several excellent readers including Lisette Lecat (who reads the audio versions of The Ladies' Number One Detective Agency books and Alexandra Fuller's books).

I like folktales in theory, but I don't like them in practice. I can't find ones I like to read. I don't like the ones in Russian my teacher brings out that everybody else likes. I don't even like the ones Italo Calvino writes down, even though everybody else raves about it and I love Calvino. This collection rocks. It's this very nice clear prose and the stories are cool and exciting and there's lots of wild cats who change into people. An Old Man Who Saved Some Ungrateful People is hilarious. Guinea Fowl Child, Brave Hunter, and Sister of Bones are very cool, and Children of Wax is very beautiful. Go buy this and have fun reading it, forget the children.

Prolific author Alexander McCall Smith was born and raised in Zimbabwe, and his love of African culture glows from every page of his works. His word processor in Edinburgh must hum with activity as he pours out not only the culturally rich and amusingly satisfying cases confronting Mma Ramotswe, but also a syndicated column and another series that stars a formidable Scottish woman. Mma Ramotswe first took Britain by storm in 1998, and it wasn't until 2001 that her charming methods of mitigating legal entanglements in her small town crossed the pond to enchant millions of American readers. McCall Smith shares a neighborhood address with Harry Potter's creator, J.K. Rowling. One wag pondered if there was something in the water.

McCall Smith collected over three dozen short legends and folktales, passed from generation to generation in the African veldt. Many of them he heard himself, translated over the years by his Setswana-speaking friends in Botswana, and some were gathered from others, then compiled into this charming slim volume. Intended to convey moral lessons while they entertain their young listeners, nearly all involve dangers through mythical allegories about dangerous animals or people. A few are identifiable as variations of Aesop or Grimm's Fairy Tales, but many are uniquely African. A tale of a strong-willed girl who is in danger of becoming lunch for a cannibal can be analogous in American culture as a warning against child molesters. The dangers to African children are different yet alarmingly similar. In "The Girl Who Married a Lion" we are warned against the wolf in sheep's clothing, and you cannot fail to see the parallel of "Beware of Friends You Cannot Trust" and the old adage to not get your hand caught in the cookie jar. Others are ghostly tales of loss and remorse yet told with humor and irony.

It's good news that Alexander McCall Smith has taken a three-year leave of absence from his duties as a Professor of Medical Law in Edinburgh, Scotland to focus on his writing. We look forward to more adventures with Mma Ramotswe and will keep an eye on the BBC for a series based on her unique crime-solving methods that celebrate moral certainty, warmth and compassion.

THE GIRL WHO MARRIED A LION is the perfect bedside volume.

--- Reviewed by Roz Shea

I really like Mr. Smith's books. They are so different from anything else you find. In this case, he has taken a couple of dozen stories from the southern part of Africa, probably re-written them just a bit and published them in this book. They are so different from the stories in our heritage that they stand out as very different. His main character, Mma Precious Ramotswe of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, would have grown up with these tales.

In fact Mma Ramotswe has written a letter that is published in this book. It in part reads: "They were told to me by my father's aunt, who was very old then and who is now late."

How can you not love a book like this?

This is a delightful collection of folktales of Botswana and Zimbabwe re-told by that extraordinary Scottish author, Alexander McCall Smith. Smith was born in Zimbabwe and spent many years on the African continent and even taught law at the University of Botswana. (Botswana is the home of that wise and traditionally-built lady detective, Mme Precious Ramotswe. Mme Ramotswe was kind enough to write a letter about the book that is included at the beginning of this set of tales.)

Smith states that he has taken certain liberties in the telling of these tales to make them more appealing to a broader readership. Animals and people are somewhat interchangeable in African lore and that is apparent in these stories. Examples of the titles are: Guinea Fowl Child; Sister of Bones; Children of Wax; The Girl Who Married a Lion; Two Bad Friends. Most of the stories have a lesson, although some are a little obtuse. Some of the stories bear some similarities to folktales of other lands; universal truths, as it were.

One of my favorites is Sister of Bones; another is Why Elephant and Hyena Live Far From People; another, Two Friends Who Met for Dinner (love this one!). This book is a good one to leave close at hand for a quick read or re-read of a favorite story. The stories range in number of pages from three or four to eight or nine, and are very easy to read. Some might be a little scary for youngsters, but, then, so are the Brothers Grimm, and Bambi.

Carolyn Rowe Hill

Our childhood was dominated by tales of animals. Peter Rabbit, Piglet and The Three Little Pigs are familiar to all. This practice must have a long heritage from our ancient past. Most such tales give animals a human aspect, with love, jealousy and deception playing a major part in many of the stories. The stories are rarely entertainment for its own sake. Their purpose is instruction and moral guidance. In Africa, where many people remain close to the wild, such tales are rich and provocative. They reflect daily existence, modified only by the intrusion of adventuresome characters. McCall Smith, relying on his African roots has collected this set, presenting them with his usual charm and wit.

The title story is one of deception. Any girl would be pleased to be the wife of a rich and powerful individual. Yet, she must ask herself if the costs involved are worth the status of being a wealthy man's wife. In this case, of course, the lion has disguised himself, and she must determine if he's a man or a beast. They are together long enough for her to bear two sons, complicating the issue. How it's resolved is by means of family relations. When a couple marries, the entire family has a stake in the outcome. The question of whether pride might obstruct common sense and justice looms large in this short tale.

Even when the stories are narratives of how animals interact, they are allegories of the human condition. Greed, of course, is a common problem, even when available resources are plentiful. Greed and deception are often hand-in-hand in these tales, and you need no coaching to make the human equivalent of the events portrayed. When plenty turns to scarcity, McCall Smith offers tales of grim competition and struggle for survival.

He manages to provide a light touch in relating them, but the lessons illustrated are firm enough. Each of the tales is brief, the kind told around a campfire or at bedtime. Between the nature of the material and McCall Smith's outstanding ability to convey it, this is a book that addresses all ages. And should last ages. You will not go wrong in adding this slim volume to your shelves. Just put it where your children will also be able to retrieve it. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]