I was apprehensive to see what I’d make of McCall Smith outside of Botswana, but The Sunday Philosophy Club, luckily, did not disappoint. It doesn’t hurt, of course, that the setting is Edinburgh, a place I – unlike Botswana – already know and love. And then you’ve got to love a man who can write paragraphs like this one:
‘Perhaps,’ Cat had said, but she had been looking away then, at a jar of pickled onions – this conversation had taken place in the delicatessen – and her attention had clearly wandered. Pickled onions had nothing to do with moral imagination, but were important in their own quiet, vinegary way, Isabel supposed.
Isabel Dalhousie is a charming main character, on the whole, and to make it even better she might eventually make me understand cryptic crosswords. I am certainly looking forward to the next installation, if there is one, which I hope…