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Morality for Beautiful Girls (Premier Series)

Authors: Alexander Mccall Smith, Alexander Mccall Smith
Publisher: Center Point Pub
Category: Book

List Price: £17.99
Buy New: £12.66
You Save: £5.33 (30%)



New (11) Used (5) from £12.66

Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars 25 reviews
Sales Rank: 392999

Format: Large Print
Media: Hardcover
Edition: Lrg
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 6.1 x 1

ISBN: 1585473308
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781585473304
ASIN: 1585473308

Publication Date: September 2003
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: New book. WE USE PRIORITY AIRMAIL ONLY for books from the USA. UK & European delivery is 7-10 days. Over 2,000,000 books sold to Amazon customers

Also Available In:

  • Paperback - Morality for Beautiful Girls (No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency)
  • Hardcover - Morality for Beautiful Girls (First Ladies)
  • Paperback - Morality For Beautiful Girls (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency)
  • School & Library Binding - Morality for Beautiful Girls
  • Paperback - Morality for Beautiful Girls (No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency)
  • Paperback - Morality for Beautiful Girls (No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency)
  • Audio Cassette - Morality for Beautiful Girls
  • Audio CD - Morality for Beautiful Girls

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Customer Reviews:   Read 20 more reviews...

3 out of 5 stars Inoffensive and easy to read but faintly patronising   March 13, 2008
 1 out of 3 found this review helpful

The book is very easy to read and has some enjoyable gentle humour which makes it a very calming experience.
The author seems to know his market well and writes book after book for those people. This does have the effect when reading that it is very formulaic which does take some of the pleasure of enjoying the country setting away. It also makes the whole experience a bit dull and it felt patronising at some points within the book.
It is a good little touch of Botswana for a reader who has no experience of Africa but I do not think it is suitable for anyone who wants to learn about the country.
I feel very ambiguous towards the main characters and do not really care what they do, although was starting to warm to them a bit more towards the end.
I did enjoy the language used for the dialogue and it encouraged me, along with the various descriptions, to build up a picture in my head of the characters.



4 out of 5 stars Lightweight   March 17, 2007
 3 out of 4 found this review helpful

I was pleased to see that the previous reviewer had not enjoyed this book as much as A.McCall Smith's previous 'No 1 Ladies detective Agency' novels. I wholeheartedly agree and was about to decide that I would read no further in this series. Perhaps I might now give the next a try at some time in the future.

This book concentrated on Precious Ramotswe, her assistant, Mma Makutsi, and to a lesser extent, her husband-to-be and manager of Tlokweng Speedy Road Motors, Mr J.L.B.Matekoni, who is sick through most of this book.
There are two main 'cases', the first is a suspected poisoning within the family of an influential government official and the second is the search for a suitable candidate to represent Botswana in a beauty pageant. neither have particularly exciting twists to them.
I would like to have read more about the orphans now living with Mma Ramotswe and the boy that intriguingly appeared out of the forest.

It seemed more a young adult book, a lightweight, easy read.




3 out of 5 stars Not as satisfying as its predecessors   July 18, 2006
 7 out of 7 found this review helpful

"Morality for Beautiful Girls" is somewhat disappointing in comparison to the previous Mma Ramotswe novels. This has several reasons: The beginning of the novel drags on and on, and it takes almost half of the book until the plot picks up speed and tension. Several subplots are not totally convincing, especially Mr J.L.B. Matekoni's clinical depression which is so out of character and seems contrived - as if the author had intended to give the character more depth, but in my view he failed thus making a highly convincing character rather implausible. Mma Ramotswe seems to have changed character as well in the first half; she comes across as almost meek and resigned while Mma Makutsi becomes a risk-taking, self-confident jack-of-all-trades. Also, the foster children have sadly little airtime, and for many chapters in the book, they seem to be non-existent, and Mma Makutsi's brother is forgotten. Instead, Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi go on and on about the good old Botswana morality and the bad girls that erode it - quite repetitive, schematic and boring after a while. Only the last third of the book is as delightful, captivating and convincing as the previous novels. Therefore "Morality for Beautiful Girls" merits no more than 3 stars.


5 out of 5 stars A nice read   April 10, 2005
 7 out of 10 found this review helpful

This book goes to bolster my initial opinion that McCall Smith is a sensational writer to look out for. The book goes to make the series a worthy read. I am particularly drawn to the way the author wrote about the way of life this African country especially its remarkable values. What is more, the characters are real and warm-hearted , and they give the story the humor that is necessary for an interesting life.

Other fun books to read are: The usurper and Other stories, The Kalahari Typing School for Men, Disciples of Fortune


4 out of 5 stars Hard to read without smiling!   March 23, 2005
 6 out of 8 found this review helpful

This third book in the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series continues the story of the fun characters created in the first two.

It is full of gentle stories of African life and peppered with simple sentences that I can't help smiling when reading. One conversation between a woman and the main character Precious Ramotswe has the woman observing: "You're very lucky to be marrying a man who can fix things, most husbands only break things".

If you're looking for something different from the first two, then don't buy this book. But if you enjoyed the first two and you'd like more of the same, gentle story telling setting in a very different setting to most novels, then this book is for you.

I'm off to read the next in the series!