Review: "My Italian Bulldozer" and "The Second-Worst Restaurant in France," Alexander McCall Smith

By Liz Soares

Here’s the thing about Alexander McCall Smith. He’ll put two characters in a genteel, meandering conversation that is interesting, but not scintillating. The reader may wonder: Where is this going?

Then, a camper trailer burns down. An ex-girlfriend pitches a fit in the middle of a restaurant. A stranger places an olive seductively into the mouth of a man, and his partner arrives just in time to see it.

I love McCall Smith’s books because of their gentle stories, interesting characters and, yes, philosophical discussions. But I also appreciate the way the stresses that the sorrows and indignities of life are always part of the plot.

Food writer Paul Stuart is the protagonist in this two-part series. He’s a kind man who dislikes confrontation. Despite his unwillingness to grab life with two fists, good things come to Paul — eventually.

Take the matter of the bulldozer. Paul has left Edinburgh to research and write a book in Tuscany. A misunderstanding at a car rental agency lands him in jail. Luckily, because of the type of guy he is, Paul listened to his seatmate pontificate on the plane, instead of reading a book. This passenger is an Italian VIP who not only gets Paul out of his mess but arranges for him to get transportation to the village outside of Pisa, where he’ll be staying.

Unfortunately, the vehicle is a bulldozer.

Paul is naturally apprehensive about driving this huge beast of burden on any public roads, not to mention in a foreign country. He is also nervous because Italians have a reputation for being, let us say, emotional drivers.

But his new friend, the Professor, tells him, “Going off to Montalcino on a bulldozer may seem odd, even foolish, but it is not. It will get you there, and once there, it will take you to other places you wish to visit.” Metaphorically, he means. This is Italy, not Germany, as the Professor points out.

Indeed, Paul resolves the lingering issues dealing with a romantic breakup, writes his book and finds new love.

In the second book, Paul ends up in France because he can’t find the peace and quiet to write. His new girlfriend has two cats who drive him crazy. His eccentric cousin, Chloe, offers him an apartment she owns, but the students upstairs have a band and their practice sessions are intolerably loud.

Paul has a book, “The Philosophy of Food,” promised to his publishers, and it’s going very slowly. So he takes Chloe up on her offer to join her in a small village in France, where presumably, he will be able to get something done. There, he becomes involved in the life of the village, particularly La Table de St. Vincent, which has been dubbed by some locals as “The Second Worst Restaurant in France.”

A case of food poisoning apparently caused by some bad mussels convinces Paul that the critics are right. He wants nothing to do with the place, but Chloe is determined to overhaul it. How can Paul, who is so involved with food and an excellent cook as well, refuse? He even becomes enthusiastic about the project when he realizes Hugo, the chef’s nephew, is the true talent in the kitchen.

Together, Paul and Hugo create memorable meals that have the customers raving. And Paul finds a new topic to write about, one that truly excites him.

The Paul Stuart series is warm and engaging, and provides armchair travelers with pleasant explorations of Italy and France. What better way to spend a summer’s afternoon?

Review: "The Good Pilot Peter Woodhouse," A. McCall Smith

By Paul Carrier

I should confess, in the interest of full disclosure, that I have not read Alexander McCall Smith’s biggest claim to literary fame, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency novels. But I have fond memories of the prolific author’s shorter, less celebrated, Corduroy Mansions series, which gave a starring role to a terrier named Freddie de la Hay.

Now McCall Smith is back with a heartwarming tale whose cast of characters includes another memorable canine with a grandiose name: Peter Woodhouse. A border collie from England during World War Two, the pooch finds himself, for a time, stuck behind enemy lines in occupied Holland.

Initially, The Good Pilot Peter Woodhouse centers on the relationship between Valerie Eliot, a young Englishwoman working on a farm, and Mike Peters, a British-based American airman whose job it is to take reconnaissance photos over German territory.

Val and a distant cousin, Willy, live with Val’s aunt, Annie. When Willy sees a farmer mistreating his dogs, Willy brings one of them — Peter Woodhouse — home. Annie decides she cannot keep the dog, so Val arranges for Mike to house him at the nearby  American-run airfield where Mike is stationed.

As time goes on, Val and Mike fall in love. She become pregnant. They become engaged. Peter Woodhouse, meanwhile, proves to be such a hit at the base that he becomes a mascot for the flight crews, and joins Mike on reconnaissance missions. Their lives — and Val’s — take a dramatic turn when the Mosquito carrying Mike and his navigator is shot down over the Netherlands, with Peter Woodhouse also on board.

With help from the Resistance, Mike and the unnamed navigator find refuge in a nearby village. (Peter Woodhouse, kenneled nearby by the Resistance, periodically visits the downed fliers.)

A German corporal, Karl "Ubi" Dietric, eventually discovers the Americans, thanks to Peter Woodhouse's collar, which identifies him as a U.S. Air Force "Dog First Class." Ubi quickly makes a fateful decision about their fate, and his own saga both during and after the war eventually becomes another focal point of the novel.

McCall-Smith explores difficult topics here — loneliness, loss, bigotry, mental disability, vengeance, animal cruelty — with great delicacy, and without distracting  from the advancement of the plot. The reader comes to realize that life after the war was as trying for some, in its own way, as surviving the conflict itself, and not just for defeated Germans like Ubi.

“The vicar’s cracked shoes projected from under his white cassock, the hem of which was frayed, as everything was after five years of war and the shortages that war brought,” McCall-Smith writes of a post-war baptism in rural Britain. “There was even a smell of parsimony, some said: a thin, musty smell of things used beyond their natural life, of materials patched up, cobbled together, persuaded to do whatever it was they did well after they should have been retired.”

Some of the characters in The Good Pilot Peter Woodhouse, including Mike Peters, are not as fully fleshed out as they could be. Yet the story bounces along at such a good clip that any shortcomings in that department are easily overlooked in this charming, nostalgic tale imbued with a pervasive sense of decency.

McCall-Smith’s plotting flows so smoothly that the reader quickly settles in for a comfortable ride, seduced by the skill of a talented storyteller. In the end, despite the novel’s multiple themes, the importance of forgiveness may well be the central motif of this endearing novel.

Review: "A Conspiracy of Friends," Alexander McCall Smith

By Paul Carrier

We read books for all kinds of reasons: to acquire factual information, for example, or to escape into a fictional world far different from our own.

Some books provide insight into the human condition. Others make us laugh, or cry, or ponder great questions, or marvel at an author’s skill.

Then there are those that are the literary equivalent of a mug of tea by the fireside on a chilly morning, as snow mounts during a winter storm. Such books are charming, making for a soothing read that contains just enough spice to keep us turning the pages.

A Conspiracy of Friends, the third novel in Alexander McCall Smith’s Corduroy Mansions series, falls into that last category. In it, McCall Smith continues to chronicle the intriguing but not terribly dramatic adventures of various contemporary Britons, some of whom live in the shabby coziness of Corduroy Mansions, a London apartment building.

In short, episodic chapters, each of which is focused on a particular character, McCall Smith weaves in and out of the lives of his creations, jumping from person to person to person and then looping back to characters who appeared earlier by pulling them back onstage for an encore and an update.

I suppose this series could be described as a soap opera of sorts. But that would be a bit misleading because it implies sappy dialogue, melodramatic plot twists and more than a dash of violence, none of which plague the denizens of Corduroy Mansions.

Sure, romances flourish and crumble, relationships intensify and disintegrate. Wine seller William French, for example, is shocked to learn that his best friend’s wife has been in love with him for many years. When another character, Caroline Jarvis, goes out on a date with a male roommate after telling a prospective boyfriend that she is sick, the friend to whom she lied spots the couple in a restaurant.

Then there’s psychotherapist Berthea Snark, who continues to peck away at a mean-spirited biography of her politician son Oedipus Snark, whom she loathes. Berthea also makes periodic visits to her daffy brother, Terence Moongrove, to prevent her naive, child-like sibling from self destructing.

Yet these, and other, generally unrelated plot lines chug along in a humorous and leisurely fashion, leaving the reader secure in the knowledge that nothing truly catastrophic will happen to anyone in these pages. And that certainly includes Freddie de la Hay.

Freddie is a dog. A terrier, to be more precise. (That’s him on the cover.) He’s William French’s dog, but when William takes Freddie along for a visit with friends in the country, Freddie disappears. This leaves William sick, first with worry, then with grief when he assumes that Freddie has met his end.

That’s when the novel briefly develops a real head of steam, although readers familiar with McCall Smith’s tone and Freddie’s earlier adventures in the series assume that he will emerge unscathed.

A Conspiracy of Friends has loose ends aplenty by the time it draws to a close, suggesting that another installment in the series is likely. Which is fine by me, because I’d love to spend more time with the endearing denizens of Corduroy Mansions as they grapple with the quotidian ups and downs of lives that are absorbing, but never electrifying.

Review: "Corduroy Mansions," Alexander McCall Smith

By Paul Carrier

With gentle wit and a kindly eye, Alexander McCall Smith, best known for his novels about a female detective in Botswana, unveils a new cast of characters - British, this time around - in Corduroy Mansions. Set in London, the warm, breezy tale explores the ups and downs of a varied lot of generally likable humans characters - and one eminently lovable pooch.

The residents of the Corduroy Mansions apartment building include William French, a widowed, middle-aged wine merchant saddled with a slacker of a son who refuses to move out; four young women, one of whom works for Oedipus Snark, an odious member of Parliament; and reclusive Sri Lankan transplant Basil Wickramsinghe, an accountant.

Into this mix bounds Freddie de la Hay, a Pimlico terrier that French takes in as a parttime boarder, to  finally convince his dog-hating son Eddie to get his own place.

Freddie is no ordinary pooch. A vegetarian, he has been trained to wear a seat belt when he’s riding in the car, and gets upset when people fail to buckle him up. He’s almost as intriguing as the human denizens of Corduroy Mansions, albeit less talkative. (We’re privy to his thoughts, but he does not speak.)

McCall Smith’s whimsical sense of humor is on display here. We learn, for example, that Freddie lost his job in airport security because someone filed a gender-bias complaint after discovering that all of the sniffer dogs were male. And we’re reminded that the best way to avoid unwanted small talk at a party is to wear “a discreet lapel badge” that says “please talk to me about salvation” or “no longer infectious.”

While Corduroy Mansions bubbles over with camaraderie and good cheer, that’s not to suggest that the characters are saccharine. Far from it. Snark, as his name implies, is a repulsive creature whose far-from-maternal mother is writing an unflattering biography of him because she can’t stand him.

Although the plot chugs along in a comfortable, mug-of-tea-on-a-rainy-day style, there is action aplenty.

Two characters narrowly escape death. A third suddenly loses her job. Freddie de la Hay disappears. (Don’t worry. It’s only temporary.) A stolen painting is discovered. There’s even a kidnapping. French does battle with his son as fine-art student Caroline tries to convert a friend into a boyfriend and the self-absorbed Snark manipulates everyone who is unfortunate enough to fall within his orbit.

Early on, I was struck by the fact that Corduroy Mansions reads as if it had been written to be serialized. In tone, it strongly resembles Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City novels, several of which were serialized in San Francisco newspapers, before being published in book form.

Only later did I learn that Corduroy Mansions did, in fact, debut in serialized form on the web site of the British newspaper, The Telegraph, in much the same way that Charles Dickens published some of his work sequentially in 19th-century magazines. A sequel, The Dog Who Came in from the Cold, also was serialized at telegraph.co.uk.

And the resemblance to Maupin’s work may not be entirely coincidental. McCall Smith initially serialized another novel, 44 Scotland Street, in The Scotsman newspaper back in 2004, after chatting with Maupin at a party in San Francisco.