Product Description

It was a chance encounter with Armistead Maupin (of Tales of the City fame) in San Francisco which inspired Alexander McCall Smith to write his daily novel about the residents of 44 Scotland Street, a fictitious building in a real street in the author's home town of Edinburgh. With its multiple-occupancy flats, Scotland Street is an interesting corner of the city, verging on the Bohemian, where haute bourgeoisie rub shoulders with students and the more colourful members of the intelligentsia. The comings and goings at 44 Scotland Street first made their way into print in The Scotsman newspaper in the first half of 2004. Espresso Tales features further escapades from the fringes of the New Town which appeared in The Scotsman during 2005. This new novel gives Scotland Street aficionados a chance to catch up with the occupants of what must surely be Edinburgh's most well-known literary address, and to meet more of the inhabitants of this unique corner of the city. Espresso Tales 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #379408 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Review
PRAISE FOR 44 SCOTLAND STREET '... A joyous, charming portrait of city life and human foibles, which moves beyond its setting to deal with deep moral issues and love, desire and friendship' - Melissa McClements, Sunday Express 'A light-hearted, genial soap opera' - Financial Times Magazine 'Edinburgh still rocks... it's the people that make the city what it is. And here they are, warts and all, the ordinary and the extraordinary, the misfits and the prosperous ...' Digby Durrant, The Spectator 'like bathing in glorious prose' - Simon Mayo, BBC Radio 5

About the Author
As author of the world-wide best-selling No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, Alexander McCall Smith needs no introduction.

Customer Reviews

Complete joy to read!
The second installment of the to-ings & fro-ings of 44 Scotland Street is even better than the first. With gentle humour, Alexander McCall Smith details the genteel lives of the occupants of that address, and the concerns and issues of their middle class lives (should boys have pink bedrooms to dispel gender stereotypes?). The style of writing is deceptively light, as he does indulge in some big philosophical questions through his characters and it includes discussions on the Iraq war.

The best bit of the book is in the preface - where he notes that he has decided to write a third volume!

Finally - if you are enjoying this series of books you might also enjoy the E.F.Benson 'Lucia' series of books which are equally as humorous and engaging, and have a similar charm.

A Complete Delight!
If you don't find this book laugh-out-loud funny, then you will have altogether missed the point! Every bit as delightful as 44 Scotland Street, the parody of Edinburgh characters continues in the author's usual witty fashion, with scenes of the ridiculous (but often not altogether impossible) and individual personality traits highlighted to the greatest degree. It's a superb comment upon the ridiculous... In fact, do we even realise how ridiculous our society can potentially be!?

Get back in touch with old friends from 44 Scotland Street. There's Pat, the young 20-something soon-to-be student... should she go to the nudist party at Moray Place? She's still working in the Art Gallery for Matthew & it's now turning a profit... can Matthew find some confidence? The erstwhile narcissistic Bruce had decided upon the wine trade as his latest venture, having recently been fired from his career as a chartered surveyor... of course, it doesn't bother him in the slightest that he knows nothing at all about wine! Pat's neighbour and friend Domenica is still there with her insightful comments upon humankind. So too, Angus & his faithful friend, Cyril. But more to the point, this book focuses most of all upon little Bertie (now 6) and his insufferably pushy mother, Irene. Can Stuart stand up to Irene and let Bertie be a little boy? Bertie is finding his way, having just started school, he is now tentatively trying to make friends & "fit in". But this is difficult for Bertie with his pink dungarees, his pink bedroom, his yoga classes, and Italian lessons, the sessions with the psychotherapist & his Grade 7 saxophone. Bertie wants to love mummy all the time... but is finding it very difficult...

Just as its predecessor the book is written with short pithy chapters (over 100 of them), each presenting a mini-story & social commentary of their own. Some reviewers have found the political chapters boring, but that IS totally the point - read them & you'll see why & don't worry, they're short! I loved every bit of this book & everyone with a good sense of humour should find something to enjoy.

21st Century Dickens in Edinburgh
Alexander McCall Smith has helped recreate the daily serialized newspaper-published novel with 44 Scotland Street. In 110 tasty snippets, he introduces vast numbers of memorable characters, expands the action, provides 109 cliff hangers and deliciously complicates the plot. With a spare style and a twinkle in his eye, the author gives us plenty to chuckle about in unveiling the pretensions of the self-congratulatory urbanized upper crust.

Pat is taking a second year off from her college studies. The first year off didn't work quite as she had hoped. Pat is delighted to find a flat she can share with the handsome, if self-absorbed, Bruce, and two perpetually missing flat mates. She quickly finds a job working in an art gallery where the owner, Chris, knows even less about what he's doing than she does. On the same floor in her building is a delightful older woman, Domenica, who knows where all the bodies are buried. Through the walls, Pat can hear little Bertie practicing his saxophone for his mother, Irene . . . who's obsessed with having her son become a civilized genius. Bertie has other ideas.

The cast of characters is soon off on a mad-cap scramble through life whose continuing plot thread is a painting that just might be valuable . . . if only someone can figure out who painted it . . . and where it is. Along the way, lust rears its powerful chemistry and Pat learns to tell the good guys from the bad.

The story reminded me very much of the best of Maeve Binchy's novels about modern Dublin. 44 Scotland Street has the advantage over Ms. Binchy because Alexander McCall Smith is able to deftly develop his story so rapidly with sure visual pictures while bringing out the humor . . . rather than the painful melodrama . . . in everyday living.

I found myself roaring with laughter throughout the book. There's lots of use of psychiatry to develop the humor. I thought that the scenes with Irene and Bertie's analyst were irresitible! I didn't know that you could have so much fun while sober in Scotland.