Life must be filled up

Thanks to the wondrousness that is currently my library, I’ve been able to read the two latest offerings from Alexander McCall Smith (though I’ll probably buy them anyway, to match the rest). First, The Lost Art of Gratitude. *L
‘Detective series’ is a somewhat misleading description of the Isabel Dalhousie novels. Rather than page-turning mysteries we have slightly odd happenings which bother people and which Isabel feels obliged to investigate. There’s less description of events than there is stream of consciousness writing, in which Isabel’s thoughts wander, even while she’s on the phone or talking to someone else. It’s all very agreeable because she is an intelligent woman with an agreeable, indeed enviable lifestyle. Strolling around Edinburgh and its environs is also very pleasant. If I have a niggle with this particular title it’s the constant harping on about Scotland and Isabel’s pride in her son Charlie’s Scottishness (he even has a baby kilt). ‘What?’ you may say, ‘It is set in Edinburgh after all.’ Yes, but if I were to write a book about the wonderfulness of being English, someone having ‘English eyes’, for goodness sake, people would suspect me of BNP sympathies. 'Snot fair.

As usual, it’s the basic decency of the McCall Smith world which appeals. I liked this about books:

‘Children like simple tales,’ said Isabel.
‘And we don’t?’
Isabel thought about this. It was just too easy to say that adults did not like stories that were simple, and perhaps that was wrong. Perhaps that was what adults really wanted, searched for and rarely found: a simple story in which good triumphs against cynicism and despair. That was what she wanted, but she was aware of the fact that one did not publicise the fact too widely, certainly not in sophisticated circles. Such circles wanted complexity, dysfunction and irony: there was no room for joy, celebration or pathos. But where was the fun in that?

I think a lot of us are looking for that sort of fun sometimes.


Next. ( Corduroy Mansions )

How Green are my Wellies?*, Anna Shepard
Lilies That Fester, Hazel Holt
Mary Todd’s Last Term, Frances Greenwood
Teatime for the Traditionally Built, Alexander McCall Smith
The Murder on the Downs, Simon Brett
The Mysterious Benedict Society, Trenton Lee Stewart
The Cipher Garden, Martin Edwards*
Silent in the Grave, Deanna Raybourn
Singled Out. How two million women survived without men after the first world war, Virginia Nicholson
Green Grass, Raffaella Barker
Nella Last’s Peace
( Reviews )

A lot of people seem to have had what they call a bad reading month, by which they mean they haven’t read much. We’re not all in some Stakhanovite competition to see who can read the most books. One might read a lot of bad books or just one superlative one; which is more worthwhile? (rhetorical question). I only managed half a dozen but the first was very good indeed.

Miracles of Life by J G Ballard. Lent to me by huskyteer and finished within twenty four hours. Ballard is not really my kind of writer but I loved Empire of the Sun. It still bugs me that Hotel du Lac won the Booker prize in 1984 when Ballard’s wonderful novel was on the shortlist. Ballard was brought up in Shanghai, the privileged child of a prosperous expat. community surrounded by the appalling filth and poverty of the native Chinese. He spent two and a half years in a Japanese internment camp then after the war travelled to a depressing, defeated-seeming England, where he felt like an alien. These events help to explain how in spite of a public school education and Cambridge, despite living in the same suburban house for fifty years, he has managed to remain an outsider in his head. This autobiography is beautifully written and reads like a novel. Highly recommended.
( more books )

I'm late with this but I've written about most of them already.

Sputnik Caledonia, Andrew Crumey
The Provost’s Jewel, Elisabeth Kyle
The Careful Use of Compliments, Alexander McCall Smith
Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer, Jane Brocket
Eating for England, Nigel Slater
When Will There Be Good News? Kate Atkinson
A Company of Swans, Eva Ibbotson
The Secret Countess, Eva Ibbotson
Caught in the Light, Robert Goddard
Another superb thriller with a convoluted plot in which nothing is what it seems. Unusually, a very dark ending.
Caroline at the Film Studios, Barbara Vereker
This is the first of four books about Caroline. I shan't bother seeking out the rest, in spite of the cover.
The Unbearable Lightness of Scones, Alexander McCall Smith
I was longing to read this and am désolée to learn that there will not be another instalment next year.
The Star of Kazan, Eva Ibbotson
I started Madam Will You Talk by Mary Stewart but I realised straight away that I knew the story, although I couldn't remember the book. I think it must have been a radio play fairly recently?
Ongoing:
The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters edited by Charlotte Mosley
Why am I reading this? Ghastly old bats.
Coming Up For Air, George Orwell
Re-read of which more later.

A review in the Telegraph a few weeks ago made me think I would like Sputnik Caledonia by Andrew Crumey. Unfortunately, I was wrong, but that’s not to say it’s a bad book or an uninteresting one. Robbie is growing up in Glasgow in the 1960s in an old fashioned socialist household. He dreams not of being an astronaut but a cosmonaut, having been convinced by his father that Russian is Best. He lives mainly in his head (so far, so Black Swan Green) and part one ends with him hearing voices speaking to him from the ancient radiogram in his bedroom.

In part two, Robbie is nineteen, in the same physical spot but a parallel universe in which a 1946 revolution has established a Democratic Republic based on Marxist principles. Robbie has little recollection of his former life but is surrounded by people who are alternative versions of those he has known before. He has no idea what is going on (makes two of us) and is a willing guinea pig in an unbelievably cruel experiment. I found this very hard going, especially all the physics. Part three returns to the present in which a character known only as ‘the kid’ fantasises about Dr Who and is strangely connected to Robert’s family.

All this is very clever in its plotting connections and also, in a Nice Work sort of way, in its literary exploitation of Goethe. At the end though, I’m afraid my feeling was ‘So wot?’ and I was quite unmoved by it.



Also Scottish but very different is a children’s book, The Provost’s Jewel by Elisabeth Kyle, first published in 1950. Elisabeth Kyle is best known for her series of books about Peter and Margot Furze, which began with Visitors from England in 1941. In this book ten year old orphan Walter is allowed by his uncle to fend for himself for a while to prove that he is fit to move to New York. He leaves peaceful Port Angus for teeming Glasgow and, as is the way of such stories, foils some notorious jewel thieves. I found this less engaging than her other books but Glaswegians would love reading about the trams!

Finally, I’m now reading the latest Isabel Dalhousie novel, The Careful Use of Compliments by Alexander McCall Smith. Some people say they like the lady detectives but can’t get into the Edinburgh books and others say just the opposite. I love Mma Ramotswe and I can’t get enough of Scotland Street; as far as I’m concerned it could go on and on forever. I’m less fond of Isabel and her so-called crime solving but I still enjoy reading about life in Edinburgh. Next up, something very English, I think.

I treated myself to The World According to Bertie now it’s in paperback. Goodness, it’s been on my wish list long enough. Of course I’m loving it as I can’t get enough of Bertie, Cyril and sad Matthew. But something odd has happened to the denizens of Scotland Street. I think they must have been reading the novels of Alexander McCall Smith because they are adopting the speech patterns of Gabarone. Take this: ‘Fathers don’t want their daughters to get hurt. And yet they know that there are plenty of men only too ready to treat them badly. They know that.’ Mr J L B Matekoni? Nope, Dr Macgregor, Edinburgh psychiatrist. Really? And here’s Angus Lordie: ‘If one wrote a note to such a hostess one would have to say: ”To one who stayed away.” Yes! That’s what one would have to write.’ See what I mean?

A mystery indisposition has meant that I’ve spent much of the last two days lying on the sofa, reading. So it was lucky for me that at the market last Saturday I bought very cheaply three books by Alexander McCall Smith which I hadn’t read before. First I read Espresso Tales, more news from 44 Scotland Street. This is taken from a serial which the prolific author writes for The Scotsman and I love it. It is a continuous narrative which need never have an end. It makes me repeat what I said before in a previous post: that there are many similarities between McCall Smith and that other, late, Scottish writer of light fiction, O Douglas. In Espresso Tales people meet, eat, drink coffee, talk. Occasionally something interesting will happen to them. That’s it. Now re-title one of O Douglas’s books Tea Tales and where’s the difference? People meet, eat, drink tea, talk. Occasionally something interesting will happen to them. That’s it. In Blue Shoes and Happiness, which I’m reading now, Mma Makutsi says, “these small things are important for people. Mma Ramotswe has often told me that our lives are made up of small things. And I think she is right.” Now read The Day of Small Things by O Douglas. I rest my case.

As well as writing all these books, McCall Smith has a web site where, for example, he tells Americans where to buy bush tea. I plan to try it myself.