The Revolving Door of Life

January 15, 2016
More comings and goings at 44 Scotland St. and in its charming Edinburgh environs. The main going is ongoing: the continued absence of Bertie Pollock's basilisk of a mother, Irene, who's been detained indefinitely in a Persian Gulf harem, where she's organized a book group while she waits for the diplomats to sort out her return. Stuart Pollock may be a dab hand at statistics, but he's not up to the task of managing Bertie, who's just turned 7, or his infant brother, Ulysses, on his own. So he calls his own mother, Nicola Tavares de Lumiares, who leaves her husband behind in Portugal and flies to her son's side, to the deep gratification of everyone, especially Bertie. Outside town, gallery owner Matthew Harmony, his wife, Elspeth, and their triplets are still settling into an old farmhouse Matthew's bought from the Duke of Johannesburg, who's constantly afraid that his right to his title will be exposed by the self-appointed authorities of the peerage, when Matthew discovers a secret room hidden behind a bookcase. Matthew's assistant and former girlfriend, Pat McGregor, is so worried that Anichka, the young Czech woman who's engaged to her psychiatrist father, is a gold digger that she contemplates desperate measures: throwing her own ex-boyfriend, irresistibly handsome narcissist Bruce Anderson, into Anichka's path to test her motives and perhaps derail her schemes. Only portrait painter Angus Lordie and his bride, anthropologist Domenica Macdonald, seem to be moving forward on an even keel--so there's little to say about them until Angus has a touching epiphany and composes a poem whose heartfelt spirits are perhaps a bit loftier than the actual proceedings. As usual, it's hard to tell from moment to moment which disturbances in Smith's universe (Bertie's Guide to Life and Mothers, 2015, etc.) will pass after a momentary frisson and which will lead to serious ethical dilemmas. A bit like life, when you think about it.

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Starred review from February 15, 2016
McCall Smith has hit upon a completely apt title for this, his tenth installment in the 44 Scotland Street series, set in Edinburgh. Over the course of the series, characters have moved from the titular upscale tenement (only a cultural anthropologist and a family with a wonderful seven-year-old remain as the original tenants), most to other Edinburgh locations but, in the case of the uptight mother of seven-year-old Bertie Pollock, into a bedouin harem. The characters have also moved into and out of each other's lives, and into and out of predicaments, all handled with McCall Smith's deft plotting and sometimes compassionate, sometimes biting wit. A hero we can cheer for has emerged over the last few books: Bertie Pollock, who yearns to move to Glasgow as soon as he turns 18 to escape the rule of his micromanaging mother (now, fortuitously, in a harem). And this book introduces a new hero, Bertie's grandmother, who swoops in to take care of him, showing him a brighter world. McCall Smith devotes whole chapters to different characters, opening up their views through conversation and their own reflections (even the series' antihero, the charming sociopath Bruce, is given his voice). Sometimes their views are cheerful and sensible; other times mildly deluded; and still other times, as when the chapter zooms in on Bertie's schoolmates, hilarious. Another tour de force from McCall Smith.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)