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| 44 Scotland Street |
| Alexander McCall Smith
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EAN: 9780349118970
Format: Paperback
Release Date: 1 November 2005
Recommended Retail Price: R160
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The story revolves around the comings and goings at No. 44 Scotland Street, a fictitious building in a real street in Edinburgh.
Immediately recognisable are the Edinburgh chartered surveyor, stalwart of the Conservative Association, who dreams of membership of Scotland’s most exclusive golf club.
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We have the pushy Stockbridge mother, and her prodigiously talented five-year-old son, who is making good progress with the saxophone and with his Italian.
Then there is Domenica Macdonald who is that type of Edinburgh lady who sees herself as a citizen of a broader intellectual world.
In McCall Smith’s hands such characters retain charm and novelty, simultaneously arousing both mirth and empathy. 44 Scotland Street is vintage McCall Smith, tackling issues of trust and honesty, snobbery and hypocrisy, love and loss, but all with great lightness of touch.
Clever, elegant and funny, this is a novel that provides huge entertainment but which is underpinned by the moral dilemmas of everyday life and the characters’ struggles to resolve them.
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44 Scotland Street, Alexander McCall Smith, Book, Paperback
April 15th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Can’t wait to get my hands on this title … Sounds like a fab read!
April 15th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Great, light hearted read with characters that are very believable and written in such a way that you can visualise them in all their glory, can’t wait for the next one!
April 15th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
A wonderful weekend away book to be read curled up in front of a fire.
April 15th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Can’t wait to get lost in this book…
April 15th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
44 Scotland Street
As a delighted, besotted reader of Smith’s No. 1 Detective Agency series, I fell upon this book with delight.
On the plus side, it is well-written and has the atmosphere of Edinburgh.
For the rest, it is told as a diary, a very tricky method, and, in this reviewer’s opinion, it fails. A crowd of odd characters inhabits a boarding house and does things for a lot of pages. There is no single character with whom to identify and not enough sheer Story to hold the viewer.
The denouement is horrid, frustrating and extraordinarily unlikely. Its roots are not within the characters and the story and I found it horrid.
Smith has since redeemed himself with the Sunday Philosophy Club, but this book and its sequels are best left unread.
April 15th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
I read several types of books and I mainly exclude romance novel types of books. This Alexander McCall Smith bookm 44 Scotland Street does not seem to fall in that category. I probably would enjoy it!
April 15th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
This book reading from the summary is what we need in our present generation.It seems like the more generations are born the more we encounter lack of Trust and Honesty .I say Big-ups.
Thankx.
April 15th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
Can’t wait! What a treat is in store for me. Another thrilling read and another unputdownable book.
April 15th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
I’ve never read any of Alexander Mcall Smith’s books,I’m always intrigued by reading a book by someone whose writting I’m not familiar with.The title begs for one to get a copy,soonest!I’d really like to read 44 Scotland Street.
April 15th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
This is a book about ordinary people living ordinary lives but written by an extraordinary author so that one simply cannot put it down!
April 15th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
I’v never read any of Alexander McCall Smiths’s books,hoever,I’m always fascinated and intrifued by readind a book by an Author whose work I’m not familiar with.I’d really like to read 44 Scotland Street,the title alone begs one to get a copy,soonest!
April 15th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Sounds like a good read to me…
April 15th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
Alexander McCall Smith’s characters are the perfect antidote to real life. Bertie, “Mummy” and Doctor Fairbairn are especially enjoyable. And who can help liking Edinburgh with all those wonderful goings-on?
April 15th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
This looks like a really delightful read – curl up on a rainy afternoon and just get carried away in the story.
Look forward to reading it.
April 16th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Looking forward to the charm,comedy and entertainment!
April 18th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
I’m looking forward to reading this book, as it a long time since I have read a clever, elegant and funny, novel. I am sure it will give me great entertainment reading about the dilema of everyday life and the characters and struggles around it. Really looking forward in reading it.
April 29th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
I cant wait to receive my free copy so that I can read it I am so intrigued and waiting in anticipation
May 13th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
I’ve just picked up from the post office my copy of “44 Scotland Street” to review, and can’t wait to start reading. Fortunately its arrival has coincided with a loooong flight to London via Dubai – you know the type. Watch this space… Thanks Penguin.
May 15th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
I tend to scan any new book first to make up my mind whether I want to read it with the attantion it deserves – I am page 9 and so far so good!
May 26th, 2009 at 9:14 am
McCall Smith once bemoaned the fact that newspapers no longer ran serialised novels, the kind popularised by Charles Dickens in the nineteenth century. Fortunately for us, the editorial staff at his local paper, The Scotsman, decided to accept McCall Smith’s unwitting challenge of a serialised novel, and what we have here is a collection of the first volume of this novel. This work is vintage McCall Smith. The story revolves around the comings and goings at No. 44 Scotland Street, a fictitious building in a real street in Edinburgh. It begins with Pat, a twenty-year-old on her second gap year, who decides to move into No. 44, and then takes up a job at a nearby art gallery. The other characters, which McCall Smith so enjoyed creating, include her flatmate Bruce, a narcissistic and philandering chartered surveyor, and the shrewd but mysteriously employed neighbour Domenica MacDonald, an older lady with a delicious past to reveal. Another gem is the gloriously pretentious Irene, whose precocious five-year-old, Bertie, is in therapy after setting fire to his father’s copy of the Guardian … while he was reading it. In McCall Smith’s hands, these and a host of other characters are portrayed in a charming and novel manner, arousing both mirth and empathy. 44 Scotland Street is, as McCall Smith intended, a bit of light-hearted fiction, but one which still tackles the moral dilemmas of our time, including trust and honesty, snobbery and hypocrisy, and love and loss. Clever, elegant and funny, this is just the novel for curling up under the duvet on a cold winter’s day with a mug of hot chocolate.
June 3rd, 2009 at 1:11 pm
It was an awesome read i just couldnt put down the book and it kept me on the edge of my seat all the time and when you least expect it something completely compelling happens
June 10th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
I took some time to get into it. Then i gave the characters accents, then it was one funny page after another! It was highly enjoyable and related to it greatly, a very honest, very easy and very lose yourself type of book. It even travelled to gym on accoasion, made the orbitrec much more enjoyable.
June 15th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
About a third of the way through the book. Enjoying it more the No1 Ladies Detective Agency Series.
June 17th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
Oh, yes, 44 Scotland Street is a perfect book to read on a long plane trip.
McCall Smith’s serialised-style chapters and his uncomplicated story line make for an easy pick-up and put-down read. As with his Detective Agency books he has given us a delightful mix of characters. I have to admit that I found some a little two-dimensional, but at least I didn’t have to draw up a family tree or character list to remember who was who.
If the author wanted us to gain more than pure enjoyment from the story, I guess the message would be the emphasis on the flaws of a society which honours the false pretensions of money, class, intelligence and physical beauty.
In my opinion, 44 Scotland Street, would be a good addition to a book club list for those days when you just don’t feel like grappling with anything too serious.
But please, Mr McCall Smith, lose the illustrator. I find his childish sketches patronising and add nothing to the value of the writing.
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Hi Penguin
Do you have any more titles which you would like reviewed? I’m a hungry reader! Living in the isolated-from-bookshops Karoo! Regards
June 22nd, 2009 at 6:25 pm
PS. Love to get my hands on an “Outliers”. Or “Blink”. I have read “Tipping Point”, which was an amazing read and one which I would recommend to anyone who’s even vaguely interested in business.
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:39 am
Hi Romy
We are thrilled that you would like to review more of out titles!
Seeing as you are far from book shops, on our website we have a list of online retailers that can deliver books direct to your door step without the inconvenience of travelling to find one.
We look forward to your next review!
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:40 am
I fell in love with McCall Smith’s writing style when I read 44 Scotland Street, my first of his books. I was delighted by his dry, wry sense of humour – almost as if he was nudging me in the ribs to quietly chuckle at the goings-on described.
I was laughing so hard as I read through the chapters on the Conservative ball, the tears dripped from my chin and I gasped for breath. His character development was as though he layered coats of watercolours to build up their personalities, and I found I really knew the personalities by the end of the book.
I enjoyed the short chapters – it was easy to quickly ‘just finish this chapter’ when I snatched moments to read. I found the narrative style easy to follow and I loved the entirely believable quirky personalities and characters.
It just left me wanting more! Thank you for the great introduction to, for me, a new author.
July 3rd, 2009 at 11:09 am
This was a first for me. I have not read any of McCall Smith’s books. Had no idea what was about to happen. I really enjoyed the feel around the happenings at 44 Scotland Street. It kept you guessing all along. Being short chapters made reading easy.
Really worth the read.
July 6th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
I have read 3 of Mc Call Smith’s Botswana books and thoroughly enjoyed them. 44 Scotland street was a first for me in this series. He has a way of writing that is so visual that one feels as if one is invisible and present where ever the characters are. One relates to the characters as they are so real, whether in Edinburgh or Botswana. All of this written with humour and wit, while giving insight into the communities being written about.
A thoroughly delightful real, read.
July 14th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Thank you very much for my free copy of this book. I found it easy light reading. As has been noted above, McCall Smith originally wrote 44 Scotland Street for an Edinburgh newspaper, with a chapter published daily. All the chapters are the same length and each tends to have a single theme or story. Sometimes a story arc carries across a few consecutive chapters, but more often than not each new chapter brings new characters and a new adventure. I think he does this very well, with each chapter a little vignette. This makes it very easy to dip in and out of this book – it is the perfect read to carry around in your handbag, or to have in your car or on a plane (or even in the loo!). What it does mean too is that it doesn’t read much like a novel – it doesn’t draw one in with long narratives, complicated plots or deep complex characters. Also, there is real end to the book (in fact, several story lines are left unresolved) so it was no surprise to learn that this is the first of several collections of the 44 Scotland Street pieces. I would definitely read more to find out what happens next to the various characters. I think the characters are great fun – there are lots of them, and they very well-drawn, funny and true, even through painted in broad strokes and tending to the stereotypical. The humour of the characters and the stories (which centre around little mysteries, romances, misadventures and the like) reminded me a lot of PG Wodehouse. Yes, it is a little old-fashioned! But I also found 44 Scotland Street light-hearted, warm and witty.
July 16th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
I’m still reading this book, but I’m not over the moon by it. I’ve never read any of his books, and was very excited about it. But I’m not enjoying it as much as I was hoping I would. But it is sometimes funny and witty, but there are too many characters and I can’t identify with one and get into their character. I will try more of his books, hopefully, but this one is not standing out as a favourite on my list. I’m also not too keen on the illustrations inside. I like to use my imagination.
Thanks anyway for the opportunity to read it and I hope that I could get a chance like this again!
August 1st, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Thank you for the opportunity of reading 44 Scotland Street. The first Alexander McCall Smith’s writing I’ve experienced. At first, I was impressed by the short chapters, that were easy to get into and the different characters. Most were interesting and people that you could relate to or imagine that you’ve known at some time. I was particularly interested in little Bertie and his mother’s relationship and was hoping that he would one day be ‘understood’. Pat too seemed quite ‘lost’ and her association with Bruce was very typical of what does happen to young girls of today who haven’t found themselves yet. Having said this and that the Conservative Ball was quite hilarious and wondered whether this could in fact ever have happened and the scenario with the ultimate destruction of the Peploe/Vettriano painting, I found that at about two thirds through the book, it tended to drag and was being written just to fill the pages. I was disappointed that in the end, nothing seemed to gel and yes, I do understand that there might be a sequel, but there was just too much just left in the air to be totally conclusive for me and I was wondering whether I would want to read the next issue. Thank you again for choosing me as a reader/critic though. I would very much like to have the chance of reviewing another publication in the future. And oh yes – what was the purpose of the illustrations – they did nothing to enhance the fabric of the tales.
August 19th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Thanks for the opportunity to review this book for you.
Feedback from my book club is as follows:
- fun and easy read enjoyed it – but die-hard fans may be get a bit frustrated with this particular book and the style of writing
- I did not enjoy it as much as his 1st Lady Detective Stories
- I realise that it was orginally written as a series for the newspaper but I found it a bit disjointed and didn’t feel like I got enough info or story about each family
- Pleasant enough read