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LOVE OVER SCOTLAND
Alexander McCall Smith
Anchor Books
Fiction
ISBN: 9780307275981
When you step into the pages of a 44 Scotland Street novel, you enter Edinburgh
as prolific novelist Alexander McCall Smith’s own private guest. McCall
Smith’s intimate love affair with his adopted city peeps through the windows
of this fictional townhouse condominium like a cool Scottish sun on a rare cloudless
day.
LOVE OVER SCOTLAND is the third in the saga of the residents of 44 Scotland
Street, and it finds several of its inhabitants from the first two novels in
new digs but maintaining firm ties to the relationships they first nurtured
behind those doors.
Still in residence is the six-year-old child prodigy Bertie, whose saxophone
jazz riffs waft up the stairwells and through the heating vents to the other
residents. His absent-minded father --- having lost, or mislaid, the family
car again --- inadvertently introduces his family and some of the other main
characters to Lard O’Connor, a Glasgow businessman of uncertain means.
O’Connor’s influence does not stop with Bertie’s father, however,
as Big Lou, the owner of the corner coffeehouse, encounters problems with her
boyfriend. Meanwhile, under the guidance of his insufferable mother, Bertie
finds himself heading off to Paris with a student orchestra only to end up buskering
for Euros on a Paris West Bank street corner when the field trip goes awry.
Anthropologist Domenica has flown off to the Malacca Straits to study pirates
of the Far East, subletting her Scotland Street flat to a novelist friend, Antonia.
She has also left her old friend, Angus Lordie, and his philosophical dog, Cyril,
to Angelica in hopes they will entertain one another while she develops her
theories on modern pirates on the high seas. Her matchmaking skills are tested
as the two meet in a disastrous dinner for two. Domenica puts to good use her
knowledge of Pidgin English on an adventure with an aging pirate off the Sumatran
coast.
Meanwhile, Cyril provides a comedic voice to the story with his wry comments
on the potential tenderness of the ankles he observes in passing, particularly
those of the denizens of a local pub, where he is treated to his bowl of Guinness
and the occasional chip. Tethered to a fence rail outside an upscale delicatessen
where his gobbling of a salami has left him persona non gratis, Cyril is kidnapped
and escapes in an unsavory part of Edinburgh, leaving poor Angus to look inward
darkly at his lonely life.
The townhouse’s professional student, Pat, has moved out of Number 44
due to personal entanglements with the rakish Bruce, only to find an even more
distressing situation with her new female roommate. Thus she finds herself moving
in with her shy and bumbling boss from the art gallery, Matthew, and she begins
to discover just how complicated relationships can make one’s life, especially
when young and beautiful. Matthew, meanwhile, has come into a handsome inheritance
that leaves him quite wealthy, but no more or less cultured, well dressed and
sophisticated than the starving art store owner he’s always been. He also
discovers that having money isn’t the solution to problems, either his
own or of others.
Alexander McCall Smith’s gentle satire and congenial voice bring us many
smiles and the occasional chuckle as he weaves his storytelling net to enfold
each of these memorable characters.
--- Reviewed by Roz Shea
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