{"id":39,"date":"2011-11-13T13:51:44","date_gmt":"2011-11-13T13:51:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/book-ish.com\/?p=39"},"modified":"2011-11-13T13:51:44","modified_gmt":"2011-11-13T13:51:44","slug":"the-unbearable-lightness-of-scones-by-alexander-mccall-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/book-ish.com\/?p=39","title":{"rendered":"The Unbearable Lightness of Scones by Alexander McCall Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am a fan of Mr McCall Smith\u2019s books, especially the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency<\/strong> series. Of his other series\u2019, the44 Scotland Street is one I particularly enjoy. The books are about the residents of the house, who live in flats in the building. But this one is, sadly, the least of them. Matthew from the art gallery gets married to Elspeth Harmony, and has an amusing close brush with death while honeymooning in Australia. Little 6-year-old Bertie gains a victory over his overbearing mother when his father unusually stands up to her to allow his son to join the Cub Scouts. Big Lou\u2019s new beau is a rabid Jacobite and leaves her when his beloved Pretender arrives from Belgium. Various interesting and\/or amusing things to happen to the other residents, which are usual for this series.<\/p>\n

However: I have the feeling that the series is a little tired. No one seems to have moved on at all, despite this being the fifth book. Matthew could be said to have changed in that he is now married, but he\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0seem to feature very much in the general story. Also, the artist Angus Lordie\u2019s dog Cyril fathers six puppies, which are left to Angus to look after. He manages to offload all six onto a strange man he meets in the park one evening. The man lifts each puppy up, weighing them speculatively. Angus thinks that this means that the man is being caring about the puppies\u2019 welfare. At several points in the story, characters mention the rumour that puppies are being stolen and sold to restaurants, but nothing is made of it. By the end of the book, we are not told what has actually happened to them. It is as if, having introduced the idea of Cyril having puppies, Mr McCall Smith is no longer interested in them. And the scones make an appearance towards the end, in a throwaway segment that would seem to exist only to allow the cute title.<\/p>\n

The problem is, if there is a problem, that the 44 Scotland Street<\/em> stories are serialised daily in \u201cThe Scotsman\u201d. So each chapter is a brief look at one or two characters. That would be no bad thing, except that Mr McCall Smith seems to be loosing the threads. Instead of tying them neatly off at the end of each book, he leaves some of them dangling, which is very unsatisfactory.\u00a0 Despite this, I did enjoy reading it, though not as much as I enjoyed the other four.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am a fan of Mr McCall Smith\u2019s books, especially the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. Of his other series\u2019, the44 Scotland Street is one I particularly enjoy. The books are about the residents of the house, who live in flats in the building. But this one is, sadly, the least of them. Matthew […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[24,18,21],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comedy","tag-comedy","tag-scotland","tag-smith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/book-ish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/book-ish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/book-ish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/book-ish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/book-ish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/book-ish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/book-ish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/book-ish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/book-ish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}