44 Scotland Street - 9781400079445

It was a chance encounter with Armistead Maupin (of Tales of the City fame) in San Francisco which inspired this latest offering from Alexander McCall Smith. Soon after their meeting, McCall Smith published his daily novel, 44 Scotland Street, which appeared over 110 episodes in The Scotsman newspaper in the first half of 2004. The story revolves around the comings and goings at No. 44 Scotland Street, a fictitious building in a real street in the author's home city of Edinburgh. With its multiple-occupancy flats, Scotland Street is an interesting corner of the New Town, verging on the Bohemian, where haute bourgeoisie rubs shoulders with students and the more colourful members of the intelligentsia.
One of McCall Smith's particular talents is his ability to portray archetypes without resorting to stereotype or cliche. We immediately recognise the Edinburgh chartered surveyor, stalwart of the Conservative Association, who dreams of membership of Scotland's most exclusive golf club. We have the pushy 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 entertainment but which is underpinned by the moral dilemmas of everyday life and the characters' struggles to resolve them.