Compared to the other books I've read by McCall Smith, this is my least favorite. I think it's probably due to its original form as a daily series. Each little vignette is charming, but it doesn't come together as well as the others. ( )

Pat rents a room from the handsome and cocky Bruce, at 44 Scotland Street, and discovers that she has also acquired some colorful new neighbors, including Domenica, an eccentric widow.

This was an easy to read story of the people who lived in the apartment building at 44 Scotland Street. They are mostly likeable and relatable with their everyday conflicts and surprises. A light story with much humor, I’m interested in reading more in this series. ( )

Series: 44 Scotland Street #1

2023-12-20: Not digging it. Lots of boring people doing nothing in particular. I'm okay with nothing in particular, I loved Leonard and Hungry Paul, but those people were learning and growing and these people aren't. Bertie is the only one of interest. A five year old who blows up his playmates train station and says "something about politics" is at least interesting, if more than a bit scary.

2023-12-22: 25% and it's still not interesting. The Peploe? is at least amusing, and the fact that AMS outed the perp right away makes it not-a-mystery so I'm curious to see what he plans to do with that.

2023-12-23: Bertie is amusing, and sad. I just got to Lizzie, she's amusing but her parents are sad.

2023-12-27: I want to read about smart people and this book is populated almost entirely with idiots. It's gotten interesting enough that I'll probably finish it but I can't imagine reading more of the series. I also can't imagine why anyone would read the series. It seems cruel to watch these people.

2023-12-29: Can't do it. 44 Scotland Street is a boring place to live. It's filled with sleepwalkers who don't know there are other options.

2023-12-29: OMG you can write words in the Finished date! So I could put Abandoned or Forgotten or whatever. Interesting. ( )

This isn't quite Tales of the city transposed to Edinburgh, though: you would probably need Irvine Welsh to do that. In McCall Smith's world, almost all the characters are straight, white, middle-class Scots from the New Town (diversity isn't entirely forgotten, though: there is always Big Lou, a working-class woman from Arbroath, who runs the coffee bar that is one of the focuses of the story...). There's not very much going on here that would be out of place in the world of Miss Jean Brodie. That's obviously quite deliberate: to create a world in which his broad newspaper readership will feel comfortable, McCall Smith makes Edinburgh a very cosy, enclosed place, where people hang the works of Scottish painters on their walls, read Scottish novels, and listen to Scottish music. They are dimly aware of the concept of "Glasgow", even if they haven't actually been there, whilst "London" and "England" are well outside their lines of cultural reference, playing about as much part in their daily lives as New York City might for the average resident of the Bay Area.

Within this limited world, we have a rather amusing time, because McCall Smith is a very talented comic writer. Misunderstandings abound, the vain and intolerant get their comeuppance, the lovelorn might — or might not — find their dream partners, dogs lust after ankles to bite, paintings are lost and found, the Association of Scottish Nudists undergo a constitutional crisis but never seem to take their clothes off, and occasional gentle fun is poked at the Edinburghness of Edinburgh. At the heart of the story are characters we treasure from the start: anthropologist-at-large Domenica, portrait painter and dog-owner Angus Lordie, hapless gallery-owner Matthew, and, rapidly stealing the show, the unfortunate six-year-old Bertie, with his well-meaning but horrendously pushy mother Irene who never allows him a breathing space in between saxophone lessons, Italian conversation and Yoga For Tots.

Seriously addictive, but terminally pleasant. ( )

Smith turns from Botswana to his own Scotland... a serial book of various inhabitants in & around 44 Scotland Street, Edinburgh. As usual, deft character sketches, bits of humor, great pacing. Dickensian. ( )