Expresso Tales by Alexander McCall Smith

Just finished "Expresso Tales" by Alexander McCall Smith. It is occasionally uneven as the residents of 44 Scotland Street do not all jump off the page, but the ones that do like Bertie the precocious six year old who wears pink dungarees, befuddles his psycotherapist, befriends dogs, gangsters, and a vegan named Tofu, are well worth plowing through a few duds. This is not quite in the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency realm, but it remains a fine read. Smith's sardonic humor and basic humanity doesn't shine quite as brightly in sun starved Edinburgh as Botswana, but the poem at the end of the book makes up for any minor flaws along the way.

It expresses a lovely thought about what is truly important in the act of living.


"Be content with small places, the local, the short story
Rather than the saga; take pleasure in private jokes,
In expressions that cannot be translated,
In references that can be understood by only two or three,
But which speak with such eloquence for small places
And the fellowship of those whom you know so well
And whose sayings and mood are as familiar
As the weather; these mean everything,
They mean the world, they mean the world." p.344