Friday, August 07, 2009

Alexander McCall Smith: The Careful Use of Compliments

This is "an Isabel Dalhousie novel", as the cover helpfully states. Isabel has her baby, doesn't live with nor want to marry the baby's father, Jamie, because even though she loves him it doesn't feel fair to him since he's so much younger. She wants to buy a painting, but is it a forgery? And if so, who painted it?

That's about it for the storyline, really. Like I've said I'm not as fond of the Edinburgh books as I am of the Botswana books. Probably McCall Smith's writing is too naivistic to appeal to me in a Western setting that I can relate to. Possibly I'm such a colonialist. I find it interesting though how the Dalhousie novels feel so much more melancholic, even though nothing like it really is expressed in words...

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