Dear Readers,
If you want to know the secret password to enter my inner space and find torrents of love, just give me words like this:
I wrote that sticky note in my bathroom the other day after I saw my friend Lindsey’s Instagram story with a picture of her new pressure washer and the accompanying phrase I contain multitudes. I suspect the furthest thing from Lindsey’s mind when she typed those brilliant words was whether I, Ginger, would connect with them. Yet that tiny phrase gave me the same soaring feeling I have when I see the bald eagle swooping over our lake or when I hear my kids recite Mary Oliver’s “Invitation” to me or when I get to waterski on a glass lake first thing in the morning like I did yesterday or when I listen to the song “Hallelujah for Now” by Kris Allen or when I read Anne Lamott or Alexander McCall Smith or Wendell Berry. It is hard for me to tell you how deeply I could feel myself alive at that moment. (Thank you, Lindsey.)
So of course, my reply to her words was more words. I told Lindsey I loved her line and that I wanted her to love mine. Not mine, as in I wrote it, but mine as in I found it and I love it and I have to share it. I sent her this scribbled down favorite line I read recently in a poem by Alexander McCall Smith.
And I told her she’s on my guest list. Lindsey asked me how she had never heard of this writer and which book she should read first. Well. Let me tell you. All of you. And Lindsey, of course.
Dear Lindsey,
I am eager to tell you about my second favorite writer, Alexander McCall Smith. He goes by Sandy, but I like to call him AMS. He was born in 1948 to British parents in what is now Zimbabwe. He studied and taught law, was involved in committees on medical ethics, and later became a fiction writer. He and his wife settled in Scotland in the mid-1980’s and raised their two daughters there. AMS had 30 books published in the 80’s and 90’s before he began the book series, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, that would make him famous. Thirty books before he got the world’s attention! And now, evidently, he never misses a day of writing. He writes 2,000-3,000 words a day when traveling and 5,000 words a day when he is at home in Edinburgh. And they say his usual writing speed is 1,000 words an hour, which I don't doubt because he has published over 100 books, most of which are parts of different series that he writes.
I think AMS is brilliant because of how he weaves what I assume to be his own philosophical meanderings of mind and heart into the lives of his many beloved characters such as Mma Ramotswe of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series (set in Botswana), Bertie Pollack of the 44 Scotland Street series (set in Edinburgh), and Isabel Dalhousie of The Sunday Philosophy Club series (also set in Edinburgh). The smallness of the lives and places in the stories he tells make a big impact because of the ways he has his characters see the world and be embodied in their places in the world. I love him for this reason more than any other, so of course, he (and Queenie-Queenie) hold a much-deserved spot on our quote wall.
I went back through my list of all the books I’ve read since 2005 to find that I’ve read 74 AMS books in the last 17 and a half years. I actually started reading AMS in 2005 right after Bauer was born. My mom came to visit us in Orlando and brought me the box set of the first five books in his No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. Mama, thank you for this small act of love that has given me hours upon hours of dear happy thoughts.
(Who scribbled on Babywise? Hmmm. No comment.)
To date, I’ve read 22 books in the No. 1 Ladies’ series, plus 15 books in the 44 Scotland Street series and 16 books in The Sunday Philosophy Club series (my favorite series because I love Isabel Dalhousie). I’ve read three books in the Detective Varg series, three in The Corduroy Mansions series, 14 stand alone novels, and his one recent book of poetry. And there are still books I haven’t read. And he’s still writing. Hallelujah for now.
Only silence could adequately express the depth of my love for this man’s ability to write a story in my language: the language of the value of small things. I don’t want AMS to die, ever. What I really want is an AMS book that never ends, that I can just pick up and read a few more pages of every night before bed forever. His stories, extremely readable yet so rich, make me feel the same way I feel when I settle into my chair in the sun or relax in a bath. I can sink into that warmth and I can sink into these stories, these places, these characters that are as real to me as the friends I meet at Tandem every week. How can a writer do that? You will see what I mean as soon as you pick up a book. Start with Isabel. Start with the first book The Sunday Philosophy Club. And once you know Isabel, you will know AMS. And once you know AMS, you will know me better.
Love, Ginger
P.S. Down the road, I have an article I will send you in the mail from Plough magazine. I’ve given hard copies to my three friends who read AMS and love him like I do (Hi Ashley, Sarah F, and Mary Jo!). The writer of the magazine article not only says all of the above about Alexander McCall Smith in ways that are much smarter than I did, but he also makes observations comparing the moral imagination of AMS to Wendell Berry. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, right? I may as well just have my tombstone say when I die She loved Annie, AMS, and Wendell. And she contained multitudes.