NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Lifestyle

<I>Alexander McCall Smith:</I> The Full Cupboard Of Life

19 Sep, 2003 01:12 AM5 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

Reviewed by MARGIE THOMSON

Armed with a traditionally shaped, bush-tea drinking lady detective from Botswana, Mma Precious Ramotswe, Alexander McCall Smith has made a successful, if surprising, inroad into our bestseller lists. His The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency, first in a series of the same name, has been on the
international fiction list for a month, and goodness knows what will happen now that the other four books in the series are available - Tears of the Giraffe, Morality for Beautiful Girls, The Kalahari Typing School for Men - and the final one, The Full Cupboard of Life, out this week.

Why surprising? Because McCall Smith's books are not quite like any others, and certainly buck almost every literary fashion that's going. They're quietly thoughtful, comically understated, and contain no sex or violence, unless you count, in the new series, a sausage dog's hilarious triple amputation. In short, they are easily digested, polite pleasures that, vaguely Wodehouse-like, seem to hail from a different age, but in fact simply give a different window on our own.

Two things drive them. One is McCall Smith's achingly endearing characters, wise, intuitive Mma Ramotswe and, in the new series, vulnerable, pompous Professor von Igelfeld. The other is his wonderful sense of place - of Botswana with its blue skies and tussle between old and new ways, and the rarified, insecure world of German academia.

McCall Smith himself is a most unusual character - a 55-year-old cult author and professor of medical law from Edinburgh, an international authority on genetics. He grew up in Zimbabwe before moving to Scotland to study, and has also worked on the criminal law of Botswana and helped to set up that country's university law faculty.

Unusually for a British author, his books first took off in the United States, where Mma Ramotswe and co have been on the New York Times bestseller list for months. Now, however, they are very much on the up in Britain as well, and The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency is currently being turned into a television series by Anthony Minghella (The English Patient).

In the first book, Mma Ramotswe sells the cattle her father left her, to set up a detective agency, becoming Botswana's first female private eye. Her clients are the ordinary people of Botswana and the matters to be investigated are not so much crimes as the ordinary problems of existence.

In The Full Cupboard of Life, the owner of Botswana's most successful hairdressing salon wants Mma Ramotswe to investigate four potential suitors to be sure they are not after her money. At the same time, Mma Ramotswe's own fiance, a talented and scrupulous motor mechanic to whom she has been engaged since the end of the first book, seems to be avoiding taking the plunge.

McCall Smith's new trilogy introduces us to the unusually tall and distinguished Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, author of a seminal work on Romance philology, Portuguese Irregular Verbs. He is ensconced in the Institute of Romance Philology at Regensburg along with two other tall Germans, his friends and rivals Professors Unterholzer and Prinzel. This triangle of relationships is at the heart of many of the short episodes (tall stories) that together make up these three slim yet stylish books.

Obsessed with the rituals of politeness, von Igelfeld has many awkward moments and rather agonising interior quandaries over his interface with everyone from other academics, to his friend Unterholzer's sausage dog.

After 15 years of daily contact, Unterholzer accidentally lets slip von Igelfeld's Christian name. "I'm so sorry," he expostulates, "I didn't mean to call you that. It was the emotion of the occasion ... "

McCall Smith gently yet devastatingly pillories academics and most forms of propriety as he amusingly reveals the competitiveness of that world. This rivalry overrides friendship, born of a melange of vanity and insecurity, self-righteousness and yet a kind of humbleness that will do anything to avoid social embarrassment.

In von Igelfeld's case, this extends to giving a lecture to a meeting of American vets after he has been mistaken for a world expert on sausage dogs, too mortified to alert his hosts to the mistake.

However, von Igelfeld's biggest social gaffe comes in The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs when he snaps at an overly talkative man in the Vatican Library, only to later discover it was the Pope. McCall Smith's wry heresy is nowhere more evident than in the ensuing meeting between von Igelfeld and His Holiness. The Pope is revealed as lonely and bored, a solitaire addict who sighs as he reminisces about his boyhood home.

These are mild tales, lacking in the gritty social realism we are more used to. They sail awfully close to Mr Bean-type corn, but are rescued by their emotional acuity and unexpected little twists of plot that lead either in the direction of humour or philosophy. Charming.

Polygon, $34.95

* * *

Addenda and canvas have 10 sets of Alexander McCall Smith's Professor Dr von Igelfeld Entertainment series to give away. Just write your name and address on the back of an envelope and send it to: canvas, McCall giveaway, PO Box 3290, Auckland.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Save

    Share this article

Latest from Lifestyle

Lifestyle

Smokefree Rockquest Far North Regional Finals 2025 Highlights

Lifestyle

Smokefree Rockquest Wairarapa Regional Finals 2025 Highlights

Lifestyle

Smokefree Rockquest Northland Regional Finals 2025 Highlights

Get your kids involved in your reno

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Lifestyle

Smokefree Rockquest Wairarapa Regional Finals 2025 Highlights

Smokefree Rockquest Wairarapa Regional Finals 2025 Highlights

Highlights from Wairarapa's Smokefree Rockquest Regional Finals 2025. Video / Supplied

Smokefree Rockquest Northland Regional Finals 2025 Highlights

Smokefree Rockquest Northland Regional Finals 2025 Highlights

Smokefree Rockquest Far North Regional Finals 2025 Highlights

Smokefree Rockquest Far North Regional Finals 2025 Highlights

Showquest Christchurch Regional Finals 2025 Highlights

Showquest Christchurch Regional Finals 2025 Highlights

Sponsored: Why heat pumps make winter cheaper
sponsored

Sponsored: Why heat pumps make winter cheaper

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP