Fables That Fall Flat

I must apologise in advance to any fans of Precious Ramotswe or Alexander McCall Smith, but reading ‘The Girl Who Married A Lion’ was a little like chewing on flavourless gum. I picked it up from Bookstreet because of the quirky title and because it looked like light reading. Turns out it was too light to pin down my attention. I read the entire book, though.

'The Girl Who Married A Lion' is essentially a collection of African folk tales, some from Smith's collection and some gleaned from interviews with natives in Botswana . Kinda’ like Aesop fables. There are stories that enlighten the reader as to why hyenas and elephants live separately and why baboons are lazy, as well as stories on values like honesty, vanity and the like. I can take the morality and the talking animals, but the ways in which the issues are resolved are rather unnerving. In most of the stories, the most favoured solution is killing and eating the wrongdoer, whether the crime is telling a white lie or a homicide. I enjoyed Aesop and Mother Goose but I felt these stories just didn’t encourage the readers (who are reputed to be predominantly children) to think out of the box or resolve problems intelligently. In my humble opinion, the only thing that worked for it is the engaging writing style.

Having said that, this slim paperback has been hailed as ‘heart-warming’ ‘a treasure’ and ‘a truly beautiful read’. Perhaps it’s just me, then. Pick it up and judge for yourself. I’d love to hear another point of view.