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Alexander McCall Smith
THE CHARMING QUIRKS OF OTHERS (ISABEL DALHOUSIE SERIES, # 7) New York. Pantheon. 2010. 272 pages ISBN-10: 0307379175 reviewed by Patrick Killough (1) biblio.com 11/13/2010 Would you recommend this book to other readers? * No. review: I found little to like in THE CHARMING QUIRKS OF OTHERS. A dozen "major" characters roll aimlessly about today's Edinburgh, bouncing off one another's egos and hurt psyches like billiard balls. In her many conversations, moral philosopher Isabel Dalhousie flits by association from one unrelated idea to another. Sometimes her interlocutors take her lame associations of ideas for wisdom. Isabel does a lot of walking through various parts of Scotland's ancient capital. And this "quirk" is perhaps "charming" as well as healthy. It also rings true from my visits: the townspeople are tremendous walkers. Still, Isabel becomes so distraught after an emotional confrontation with a rival for her fiance's affection that she has to take a taxi back home after walking to her showdown. And this allegedly very academic moral professional philosopher receives and accepts advice about what to do from her canny cabbie. It is hard to imagine a Scottish doctor, lawyer or other professional of any period doing the same helpless stooping for advice. Author Smith's passing treatment of Sir Walter Scott's home at Abbotsford is all surface, and very tired and unconvincing surface at that. The underlying plot: Dalhousie is weakly but unwittingly engaged in an evil cause by a married woman. The plan is to shoot down the candidacies of three men to become headmaster of a private Scottish school for boys 8 - 18. The incumbent, after a dozen years presiding, is about to depart for a headmastership in SIngapore. And an anonymous letter handwritten in green ink says that there is some unspecified something wrong hovering over one unidentified candidate. Isabel Dalhousie, after perfunctory prying, discovers nothing earthshakingly bad about any of the three men and so reports to the the powerful man behind the research committee, the husband of the woman who has engaged her. Relying as always on her moral intuition rather than evidence, it dawns on Isabel while in the act of making her report that she knows who wrote the letter and why. Isabel declines rather prissily, however, to tell the great man doing the search why his wife wants the current headmaster to remain on. Dalhousie hopes instead to herself, charitably, that all adulterers and/or power-mad persons involved will find personal happiness! Edinburgh in its heyday has been famous for its medical men, its moral philosophers, its Presbyterian divines. No more: certainly not the anemic Edinburgh of Isabel Dahousie. A more bloodless, at sea, morally bankrupt cast of boring, effete lost souls may not exist elsewhere in fiction. They bumble about a great city and a country (Scotland) resembling a wee village, where everyone who counts knows or can allegedly find everything needful out about anyone else. And, ostensibly, there is nothing edifying to find or to know. Recommendation: avoid THE CHARMING QUIRKS OF OTHERS. -OOO http://www.biblio.com/books/361095379.html =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (2) lunch.com 11/13/2010 name of review: "Scotland was a village, and a very small one at that" rating: * * review: Vibrant, creative, incomparable Edinburgh, Scotland! Beloved of Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, David Hume, Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle and scores of other great men and women who studied, lived or visited there. Bonnie Prince Charlie held brief but doomed court in its Holyrood Palace. Edinburgh was the heart of one of the three great periods of Western Civilization: the Scottish Englightenment. What, then, is it now: according to author Alexander McCall Smith? Or at least, what is Edinburgh to the colorless, gutless characters who limp through his seventh Isabel Dalhousie novel, THE CHARMING QUIRKS OF OTHERS? To professional moral philosopher and editor Isabel Dalhousie, the former capital of Scotland is a place to buy a portrait of her fourth great-grandmother. Edinburgh is also where she and her much younger lover Jamie produced baby Charlie. It is where the parents may (probably may not) have a private wedding in three or four weeks in a side chapel of a Scottish Episcopal church. Edinburgh is where an adultress weakly schemes to keep her boys school headmaster lover in his job after he has announced that he is moving to Singapore. Edinburgh is where a mentally ill young woman comes on to Jamie and tries to take him away from no longer philosophical, but blubbering Isabel Dalhousie. Isabel thinks vague thoughts to herself. She converses with anyone who will listen to her, butterflying from one vaguely associated idea to another. She sprinkles her remarks with allusions to Bert Brecht ("Eat first, moralize later" [Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral]). She edits a quarterly moral philosophy journal, sorting out academic catfights among dons with big egos. The novel needs a plot of sorts. Hence, Isabel agrees (because that is what she always does: agree to help anyone who asks for her assistance) -- without knowing what she is agreeing to in this instance -- help an adulteress frame one of three innocent candidates for her lover's soon to be vacant headmastership. Isabel does not work hard at her sleuthing for faults in the three men. But one amazing coincidence upon another makes her task almost effortless. After all Edinburgh society is small. The onetime great city is like a wee neighborhood. Indeed, all "Scotland was a village, and a very small one at that" (Ch. 5). And Scots apparently cannot be reined in from gossiping. In the end, relying on her famed intuition rather than grunt work digging for credible evidence, Isabel discovers who the disgruntled soul was that wrote an anonymous poison pen letter, in green ink, that launched her investigation. Half American Southerner through her mother, philosopher Dalhousie wishes happiness and all the best to every lying, ill, depressed, striving, ambitious, worthless characer that she encountered in her un-time-consuming sleuthing. For Edinburgh atmospherics give me Sir Walter Scott and THE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN any day. Scotland never was and is not today "a very small village at that." Go there and decide for yourself. Too many trees have already been cut down to make the paper in the pages of THE CHARMING QUIRKS OF OTHERS. Do not, repeat not, waste your time on this book's bloodless vaporizings. -OOO- http://www.lunch.com/EditReview?id=1664379 http://www.lunch.com/reviews/d/UserReview-Alexander_McCall_Smith _THE_CHARMING_QUIRKS_OF _OTHERS-1664379-193669-_Scotland_was_a_village_ and_a_very_small_one_at.html http://www.lunch.com/EditReview?id=1664379 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (3) bn.com 11/13/2010 title of review: Abbotsford: "the greatest literary shrine in Scotland - Sir Walter Scott's house." rating: * * review: Alexander McCall Smith's newest Isabel Dalhousie novel is called THE CHARMING QUIRKS OF OTHERS. Smith writes much either dully or preciously, or both. Striking is his inability to paint memorable word pictures of streets, buildings and backdrops of Edinburgh and other parts of Scotland. The novel is full, by contrast, of allusions to writers, Bert Brecht, James Hogg and others. But where is the dirt and bustle of "auld reekie," the flesh and blood Edinburgh of Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson? Don't just allude to them, Smith! Write like them! Isabel Dalhousie is a middle-aged mother of a nearly two-year old illegitimate son named Charlie. Charlie's father is Isabel's live-in fiance, Jamie. Father-son names evoke Stuart monarchs of old. Evocation or writers and association of ideas propel every conversation that professional moral philosopher Dalhousie has. For a philosopher, Isabel is remarkably unsure of her ethical principles, but by novel's end, is willing to overlook or minimize every moral failing of the dozen or two characters she interacts with. What interaction? The plot, such as it is, has Isabel saying yes (as she always does) to a request for help. It comes from Jillian Mackinlay a virtual stranger. She asks Isabel to investigate the backgrounds of three men on a short-list (Broad Scots "short-leet") to be named headmaster of nearby Bishop Forbes School, for boys 8 - 18. Isabel is to report her findings and recommendations to Alex Mackinlay, Jillian's powerful husband, who sits on many boards. The research takes little of Dalhousie's time, as coincidence after coincidence dumps facts in her lap to flesh out dossiers given her by Jillian. But all is not plot. Fans of Sir Walter Scott (1771 - 1832) may turn eagerly to Chapter 11, "A Writer's House" anticipating a lovingly detailed tour of Abbotsford, his architecturally world-famous "Conundrum Castle" on the river Tweed. Novel's heroine Dalhousie has driven there an hour southeast of Edinburgh for a fund raiser organized by Alex Mackinlay and to discuss her short-list research with Jilian Mackinlay. Every reference, however, to Abbotsford is via literary allusions which knowing readers are assumed to tweak to: examples: -- When a waiter says that he does not
work for the estate but is a shepherd, Isabel muttes "An Ettrick
Shepherd." To a puzzled Jillian, Isabel simply says "James Hogg ... The Ettrick Shepherd. The
essayist."
-- Jillian says that Abbotsford is wonderful, "the greatest literary shrine in Scotland." Isabel loves Scott but doubts that people make time anymore to read his great historical novels. -- Jillian: yet just think, this house is where Scott actually wrote. "We can take a look at his writing room ... . His desk is still there." -- At dinner Isabel wonders if a fast-paced electronic generation will revive Walter Scott, "whose stories could be weighed in pounds." -- Later, driving back through "Scott country" to Edinburgh, Isabel barely notices the moonlit scenery. But "she imagined him at Abbotsford looking out of his library window, at the world he peopled with his characters, a world of desperate doings and heroic quests." If you want Edinburgh and Scotland to come alive, read Scott! Alexander Smith does the impossible: he makes both mere flat and boring backdrops to a play full of conditioned-reflex humans. -OOO- recommended reading: -- Sir Walter Scott - THE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN http://my.barnesandnoble.com/communityportal/review.aspx? reviewid=1478640 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (4) amazon.com 11/13/2010 title of review: Isabel Dalhousie - philosopher? rating: * * review: Many, many moons ago I took a Master's Degree in Scholastic Philosophy from a Jesuit college in Mobile, Alabama. Model thinkers were generally clear as to their axioms and rigorous as to their deductions, especially people like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Leibnitz and Kant. I am therefore very uncomfortable with all too often ditzy or overly literary Isabel Dalhousie, alleged professional moral philosopher and journal editor of Edinburgh, Scotland. Isabel is the heroine of Alexander McCall Smith's novel of 2010, THE CHARMING QUIRKS OF OTHERS and six others in the so-called SUNDAY PHILOSOPHY CLUB SERIES. I can only pray that Smith has now tired of la Dalhousie and that no more trees will be cut down to make pages about her confused and confusing life. There have been times, notably the Scottish Englightenment (roughly 1750 - 1800) when I would happily have traveled to Edinburgh and expected to find a great thinker. David Hume, Francis Hutcheson and Adam Smith come to mind. Ditto great physicians and historians. But a wobbly ethical thinker like fictional Isabel Dalhousie would have been laughed out of town. What are her principles or axioms? What does she stand for? What is she willing to die for? And how does she reason? Certainly not rigorously, mathematically or in syllogisms. Through analogies? So far as I can tell, only by arbitrary associations of ideas. And those associations are more often than not the names of authors. Here are some random samples: -- " ... you
often come across boys who are quite lost. they retreat into themselves
or their cults. Skateboarders are an example of that" (Ch. 3).
-- Isabel is asked to investigate a charge in an anonymous handwritten letter that one of three candidates to be headmaster of a school for boys in Lanarkshire has something disreputable in his past. The letter was handwritten "in green ink." Isabel: "There's a popular view that green ink is favoured by the insane. No truth to it, no doubt. But people say that. They say that real cranks like green ink" (Ch. 3). [COMMENT:
so what?]
-- Isabel and fiance Jamie lightheartedly discuss a rhyme for children about Augustus, a chubby lad who wouldn't eat his soup and died. Isabel: "And Belloc took a similar line, come to think of it. Remember his CAUTIONARY TALES?" One told of Matilda who called the fire brigade out one time too many without reason. "For every time she shouted 'Fire!'/ They only answered 'Little Liar'" (Ch. 5). -- Isabel owns and edits a scholarly journal on ethics. One morning, feeding Charlie, her toddler, Isabel finds that it is time to stop worrying about Charlie's possibly doomed future. Charlie, like all children with all parents "had a way of reminding us of the immediate, and that, she felt, was exactly what she needed. She abandoned her morbid thoughts and concentrated on breakfast. Grub first, then ethics. Brecht? Which in her case meant breakfast first, then THE REVIEW OF APPLIED ETHICS" (Ch. 7). [COMMENT: this last association of something with an author (in this case Bert Brecht's famous dictum: Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral - You have to chow down before you philosophize) is repeated over and over by Dalhousie.] -- Later, at Sir Walter Scott's "conundrum
castle," Abbotsford on the River Tweed, a waiter who says he is a
shepherd impels Isabel to mutter, "An
Ettrick Shepherd. ... James Hogg ... The Ettrick Shepherd. The
essayist" (Ch 11).
Isabel relates everything to words, books and authors, and novelist Smith expects us to recognize all her usually pointless allusions. Her mind is so filled with quotations that Isabel Dalhousie seems simply incapable of just noticing the moon shining on the hills on a drive back to Edinburgh from Abbotsford. No, she has to imagine Sir Walter Scott looking from his library window at what she is seeing (Ch. 11). Having read all the other reader reviews on the amazon.com URL, I will accept that author Smith can describe scenes and bring landscapes and cityscapes to concrete, pulsing life when he chooses to. Why he does not do so in THE CHARMING QUIRKS OF OTHERS is beyond me. But after "auld reekie," that legendary Edinburgh of Sir Walter Scott's Bonnie Prince Charlie in WAVERLEY and the little people of THE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN -- the city that begat Robert Louis Stevenson -- neither Alexander McCall Smith's Edinburgh, nor indeed Smith's Scotland seems anything to me but dull, humdrum, underdescribed, underfelt and forgettable. I see no need to spill more words on this novel. -OOO- tags: http://www.amazon.com/Charming-Quirks-Others -Isabel-Dalhousie/dp/0307379175/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie =UTF8&qid=1289297075&sr=1-1 =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= (5) epinions.com Review Title: Product Rating: PROS: CONS: BOTTOM LINE: 11/09/2010 flagged for DramaStef and Pestyside the incorrect title at epinions URL aohcapablanca's Full Review: Recommended: http://www0.epinions.com/prices/Book_The_Faults_of_Others_An_Isabel_Dalhousie_Novel _Alexander_McCall_Smith =-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-= file: smith_quirks http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/smith_quirks.html |