| Love Over Scotland (44 Scotland Street) | 
 enlarge | Author: Alexander Mccall Smith
Publisher: Anchor
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 5052
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 1
ISBN: 0307275981
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780307275981
ASIN: 0307275981
Publication Date: November 6, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: EX-LIBRARY; used item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned for refund. Buy with confidence - your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics!
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| Customer Reviews:
 Gentle satire and a congenial voice December 4, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
When you step into the pages of a 44 Scotland Street novel, you enter Edinburgh as prolific novelist Alexander McCall Smith's own private guest. McCall Smith's intimate love affair with his adopted city peeps through the windows of this fictional townhouse condominium like a cool Scottish sun on a rare cloudless day.
LOVE OVER SCOTLAND is the third in the saga of the residents of 44 Scotland Street, and it finds several of its inhabitants from the first two novels in new digs but maintaining firm ties to the relationships they first nurtured behind those doors.
Still in residence is the six-year-old child prodigy Bertie, whose saxophone jazz riffs waft up the stairwells and through the heating vents to the other residents. His absent-minded father --- having lost, or mislaid, the family car again --- inadvertently introduces his family and some of the other main characters to Lard O'Connor, a Glasgow businessman of uncertain means. O'Connor's influence does not stop with Bertie's father, however, as Big Lou, the owner of the corner coffeehouse, encounters problems with her boyfriend. Meanwhile, under the guidance of his insufferable mother, Bertie finds himself heading off to Paris with a student orchestra only to end up buskering for Euros on a Paris West Bank street corner when the field trip goes awry.
Anthropologist Domenica has flown off to the Malacca Straits to study pirates of the Far East, subletting her Scotland Street flat to a novelist friend, Antonia. She has also left her old friend, Angus Lordie, and his philosophical dog, Cyril, to Angelica in hopes they will entertain one another while she develops her theories on modern pirates on the high seas. Her matchmaking skills are tested as the two meet in a disastrous dinner for two. Domenica puts to good use her knowledge of Pidgin English on an adventure with an aging pirate off the Sumatran coast.
Meanwhile, Cyril provides a comedic voice to the story with his wry comments on the potential tenderness of the ankles he observes in passing, particularly those of the denizens of a local pub, where he is treated to his bowl of Guinness and the occasional chip. Tethered to a fence rail outside an upscale delicatessen where his gobbling of a salami has left him persona non gratis, Cyril is kidnapped and escapes in an unsavory part of Edinburgh, leaving poor Angus to look inward darkly at his lonely life.
The townhouse's professional student, Pat, has moved out of Number 44 due to personal entanglements with the rakish Bruce, only to find an even more distressing situation with her new female roommate. Thus she finds herself moving in with her shy and bumbling boss from the art gallery, Matthew, and she begins to discover just how complicated relationships can make one's life, especially when young and beautiful. Matthew, meanwhile, has come into a handsome inheritance that leaves him quite wealthy, but no more or less cultured, well dressed and sophisticated than the starving art store owner he's always been. He also discovers that having money isn't the solution to problems, either his own or of others.
Alexander McCall Smith's gentle satire and congenial voice bring us many smiles and the occasional chuckle as he weaves his storytelling net to enfold each of these memorable characters.
--- Reviewed by Roz Shea
 A "curl up with a cup of coffee" type of book November 29, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I love Alexander McCall Smith's books. This is not an intellectual review, just a recommendation for a comfortable, easy read. Give yourself a break from the "heavier stuff" occasionally and get involved with this author's reoccuring characters. I love his books and always look forward to the next one. He has several series going which are all equally good. I highly recommend them all!
A delightful read November 24, 2007
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
After two cancelled flights, I wondered into the book store at O'Hare and picked up this title. I had not heard of the author before. Much to my surprise, it was just the tonic to get through the day and entertaining reading on the flight.
Still Loving Scotland Street November 17, 2007
18 out of 19 found this review helpful
If you loved the other Scotland Street books, you will love this one. If you didn't, why are you reading this review? If you haven't read the earlier books, read their reviews first.
I was introduced to this series by my 85-year-old mother, who is in a nursing home in Nebraska, and is still the world's best reader. She took great pleasure in reading "Espresso Tales" aloud to the only person for many miles who would fall out of her chair laughing at such arcane humor. Melanie Klein jokes, for heaven's sake! I admit it--the snob factor is a big one for me. I may not get the Edinburgh jokes, but I get the intellectual ones.
I adore this series--I even like it better than the other McCall Smith series (I don't particularly like Isabel Dalhousie). I adore this book. My favorite part is written from the POV of Cyril, Angus Lordie's dog. Or maybe it's the bemused discussion of May 1968. Or the moment when the fireworks go off for Matthew. Or what I suspect is a send-up of a classic (and creepy) Melanie Klein transcript. Or... I guess I'll just have to read it again.
Try reading this book aloud to someone simpatico. Or have someone with a great reading style (like my mother) read it to you. It's a lovely experience.
The Charles Dickens of our day November 6, 2007
26 out of 26 found this review helpful
Alexander McCall Smith is the Charles Dickens of our day. We forget that Dickens wrote many of his novels as serials in magazines and this McCall Smith book was originally serialised in the Scotsman newspaper in Edinburgh, the Scottish capital where the plot is set.
However, unlike Dickens, McCall Smith is a wonderfully enjoyable read, with none of the depressive quality of a Dickens novel.
Not only that but in this, the third volume, many delightful things take place that bring happy resolution to some of the many fascinating sub-plots that readers have been pondering over the past few years. So for afficianados like me - and, I suspect hundreds of thousands of you - this is an espcially enjoyable novel!
You can also visit Scotland Street! My wife and I recently did a McCall Smith tour of Edinburgh and had a wonderful time.
These really are as good as the Botswana novels - read them with equal pleasure and be sure to tell all your friends. It will be an ideal gift for Christmas - and for Thanksgiving, for that matter, too.
Christopher Catherwood (author of CHURCHILL'S FOLLY [Carroll and Graf] and of MAKING WAR IN THE NAME OF GOD [Citadel])
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