The Sunday Philosophy Club Alexander McCall Smith

This is kind of a spin-off from the 44 Scotland St series, which I really enjoyed. It's very light reading, from a reasonably heavy-weight intellectual. Professor Alexander McCall Smith works in medical and criminal law at the University of Edinburgh, and, somewhere between textbooks, students and awards, writes lovely Scottish fluff such as this and a series about a female private detective in the Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency. Too much time on his hands, me thinks. If I was his work, I'd be keeping a closer on on how he spends his 'hours'...

Anyway, so. On the book: lovely.

Professor McCall Smith uses the vehicle of an older woman of independent means to discuss, in a non-academic forum, some little of life's little, well, brain teasers. Isabel Delhousie, editor of the Review of Applied Ethics, her housekeeper Grace, and her niece Cat allow us to ponder questions like 'do you tell when you know someone's partner is cheating?', and 'what does it mean when a young man wears crushed strawberry coloured corduroy trousers?'. Through them we're invited to consider the perspectives of the young & old and the wealthy & the working class, all against a backdrop of Edinburgh and interspersed with conversations about cheese, wine & art. Oh, to be a woman of independent means...

Simply delightful reading on a train North.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers

Ahhhh, I love this period of fiction. It's that John Steinbeck Grapes of Wrath 1930s & 40s mode of story-telling that gets me every time. The novels of this era, understandably, smack of impotent, latent, restless rage that sits over every thing in them. You feel it in the heat, the hunger, the skinned knees and broken hearts - everyone of which carries the weight of defeat greater than itself.

This particular novel is home to an eclectic grab-bag of characters. John Singer is a deaf mute who works engraving intricate patterns into silver. He is bereft of his best friend, another deaf mute, and left lonely and heartsick in his small town. He becomes the confidant of a host of characters - to the heroine Mick Kelly, the Marxist doctor Benedict Mady Copeland, the alcoholic socialst labourer Jake Blount, and the man in the middle Biff Brannon. None of these characters is resolved to their lot and in this novel we watch them do battle with themselves and each other.

For me, one of the most touching moments in the book involves Mick. The Kelly's are a poor family with not much going for them, but Mick has somehow happened upon a passion for classical music and composes symphonies in her head. In her dusty, stifling, out-of-the-way town, she dreams of playing piano and going abroad. She's playing around in a building site one day and graffitis "Mowtzart" for Mozart on an unfinished wall and at this point it's heartbreaking to think of the distance she'd have to travel to live out her dream. This vignette is emblematic of the gulf between the reality and the dreams of all of these characters.

"Please mind the gap between your aspirations and your observations."

Loved it. Thanks Carson.