A book in the 44 Scotland Street series from 2018
This guy pops out books like an AK 47. We are back with Domenica and Angus and all
our friends like Pat and Bruce, Matthew and his triplets, Big Lou, and of
course Bertie and his parents--Bruce and Irene. Irene is the marvelous mother
who decides that men are overrated and decides to go off to get a PhD with her
apparent lover while Bertie's dad quits his job as a government statistician.
The book was so appealing that I reread
it in its entirety before I discovered that I had read it in 2018 when it first
came out.
It is filled with local color, rib tickling humor, sly
cultural observations about art, history, philosophy, literature, music, and
poetry. You name it. McCall Smith seems
to have been to every nook and cranny in Scotland and read every book published
since the beginning of printing. And he remembers them well enough to bring
them to bear on his delightful characters and their foibles and troubles. Among
other things, he takes on the loss of civility, women’s rights, bureaucracy,
and the general lack of kindness to others. I liked it seven years ago and it
still passes muster. A joy to read and a joy to re-read. There is a bon mot
on every page e.g. “The truth then dawned . . . . that everything was finite
and that what was taken for granted had actually been paid for by years of work
for somebody whom one would never know, and who might never have been able to
enjoy any of it anyway.”
