Happy Christmas A week ago, more or less, I finished writing Emma, the revised version of the Jane Austen novel that will be published next year. I wrote this over about three months, and it was one of the most enjoyable writing experiences of my life. I felt rather sad when I had finished it, as during that period I had inhabited, with such pleasure, the world of Emma, her father, Mr Woodhouse, Harriet Smith and all the other characters of her circle. Here is how it begins: “Emma Woodhouse’s father was brought into this world, blinking and confused, on one of those final nail-biting days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was a time of sustained anxiety for anybody who read a newspaper or listened to the news on the radio, and that included his mother, Mrs Florence Woodhouse, who was anxious at the best of times and even more so at the worst.” And here is how it ends: “ … she saw a seventeenth century picture of a young man giving his hand to a young woman, and the young woman takes it and holds it, cherishing it, as one might cherish a rare and precious object.” How books begin and how they end is an interesting subject. In February my new novel, “The Forever Girl” will be published. This is how it starts: “I have often wondered about the proposition that for each of us there is one great love in our lives, and one only.” And this is how it ends: “Yes, maybe we’ve been lucky. I love him so much, Ma …” “Of course you do. Of course you do.” “I love him so much I could cry.” “Well, you mustn’t. Not on a picnic …” They were distracted at that moment. The child had slipped from her mother’s arms and fallen into the water. But she did not seem to mind. She was buoyant.” The day after I finished Emma, I began on the next Mma Ramotswe novel. I have just returned from Botswana (in the real world) but now I am back there again (in the imaginary world), following the affairs of Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi. So far I have only written one chapter, which starts: “Precious Ramotswe, creator and owner of the No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, helper of those who needed assistance with the problems in their lives, wife of that great garagiste, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, and citizen of Botswana, thought that there were broadly speaking two sorts of days. There were days on which nothing of any consequence took place – these were in a clear majority – and then there were those on which rather too much happened. On days when nothing happened you longed for something to happen; on days when too much happened, you longed for life to become a bit quieter. It was always like that, she thought, and always would be. As her father, the late Obed Ramotswe, often said: there are always too many cattle or too few – never just the right number. As a child this remark had puzzled her and she had wondered what he meant by it; now she knew.” A page or two later, she goes out into her garden in the morning, as she always does, and enjoys her first cup of redbush tea of the day: “Once outside, clasping her cup in her hand, she took a walk around the garden, savouring the freshness of the early morning air. Some people said that the air in the morning had no smell, but she thought they were wrong, for it smelled of many things – of the acacia leaves that had been closed for the night and were now opening as the morning sun touched them for the first time; of a wood fire somewhere, just a hint of it; of the wind, and the breath that the wind had, which was dry and sweet, like the breath of cattle.” We could not begin a Mma Ramotswe novel without some mention of her father, the late Obed Ramotswe, or cattle, or acacia trees for that matter. These are the things that make up her world, and all of us have such things, or their equivalent, in our lives. We have the things we like to do, the places we love, and, of course, the people who have been important to us. And those people, Mma Ramotswe says in one of those books, are still with us even if they are late. I imagine that on Christmas morning, when Mma Ramotswe goes out into her garden, she will remember her late father, and think fondly of all that he represented in his life. She will remember his battered old hat. She will remember his way with cattle. She will remember his pride in Botswana and what Botswana had achieved. I would like to wish you a very Happy Christmas. Thank you for all the support you give to the books. I consider it a very great privilege to be able to write about Mma Ramotswe, Isabel Dalhousie, Bertie and all the others. You enable me to do that, and I am most grateful. I hope that you have a peaceful New Year and that your life over the next twelve months is filled with that which you wish for it. Alexander McCall Smith
Posted on: Tue, 24 Dec 2013 17:00:10 +0000
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