44 Scotland Street
posted by Bunnery on Fri 16th Mar, 07 at 18:29:11
Okay - first of all a confession. I haven't actually read this book. I just listened to someone reading it to me via the magic of CD. It was Blythe Duff - who is an actress who is regularly in Taggart. (Usually she is saying "There's been a murrrrda")
Also - another confession, I had been resisting reading any books by Alexander McCall Smith. His No.1 Ladies Detective Agency and other titles seemed a little twee. Ha! I should know better than to judge a book by its cover.
44 Scotland Street is wonderful!!
It concerns the lives a group of people who all happen to live in the same block of flats in a real street in Edinburgh. The most fascinating of these is Dominica, the anthropologist who used to study feral children in India and now lives in a book-filled flat, spending her time with artists and writers, occasionally editing a journal in between concerts and eating out.
There is Bruce, in the flat across the hallway, a narcissistic male with a penchant for clove-scented hair gel who feels that his true calling is not surveying, but the wine trade.
Pat is the impressionable newcomer who shares his flat, and falls under his spell, but will she find out his real nature before it is too late? She isn't kept too busy at the art gallery where she works for failed businessman Matthew, as they rarely have customers. Until, that is, they discover that one of their paintings could possibly be a Peplow and worth a fortune. From that day on a rather strange chain of events lead to a surprising conclusion.
The pushy parents downstairs encourage their "wee Bertie" to learn the saxophone and Italian simultaneously, before he even gets to school. All he wants to do is play with trains and have a real friend. It is not until he writes that his nursery teacher is a cow - in Italian - on the toilet wall does he get the chance.
Originally this was serialised in The Scotsman - just like Dickens used to write. The characters are funny,sad and ridiculous in equal porportions and the description of the South Edinburgh Conservative Association Ball is one of the funniest things I've heard.
I'd recommend this to you - and I intend to search out all Mr McCall Smith's other works and read them myself :-)
Anyone got any suggestions as to which I should start with?
hi i see you have no comments on this awwww poor you im just randomly looking for things to comment on as im bored out of my mind