2007 Reading Challenge: Book 14
The Sunday Philosophy Club – Alexander McCall Smith
A cursory glance at other people’s reviews of this rather lovely book suggests it has come in for a quite unwarranted amount of stick. One, for not being yet another volume in the already quite well-populated No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, and two, for not being a very good detective story. There’s not really a lot you can say to those people complaining about the first. They illustrate perfectly the problem of an author having a big literary success in a particular genre – no-one wants to see them deviate from it ever again, and it will be fascinating to see if JK Rowling, for example, is ever allowed by the public to move on from Harry Potter. To the second, I say, you know precious little about the crime genre if you believe that this book really is a murder mystery.
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Crime stories, and especially those with pretensions to being a cozy, have some very specific conventions. One, the murderer usually has to come from a fairly tight circle of suspects who are on camera from very early on in the proceedings (the entire population of the city of Edinburgh doesn’t really count). Does that happen here? No. Secondly the mystery has to be resolved in a satisfying way, even if the full force and majesty of the law is not necessarily invoked (for instance, the guilty party may end up dead as a result of natural justice). Does that happen here? I’m not sure that it does, actually. Does the reader have enough clues in the text to work out the solution for herself? I think she’d have trouble. And lastly, going back to this term natural justice. Do the good triumph and the bad come unstuck by the turn of the last page? Emphatically they do not. Several of the bad, naming no names and uttering no spoilers here, walk away scot-free and many of the good are left looking a little bit crumpled and tear-stained.
The Sunday Philosophy Club seems to me to be an excellent illustration of the author as victim of both his own success and of book marketing in general. To carry on with our Harry Potter analogy, JK Rowling has been heard to say that she never intended to write a children’s series, that’s just how the publishers saw fit to market her work. You might feel this is a bit disingenuous but it does help to illustrate how these days an author needs to have a unique selling point that the industry and the public can get hold of, and then not to deviate from it. And this unassuming professor of medical ethics from Edinburgh is now pigeonholed as a crime novelist, and therefore mysteries are what he must be writing, regardless of the facts of the matter.
I think this is, quite simply, a book about philosophy and its practical applications. The mystery plot and the demands it places on the characters seems to be a kind of extended framework for philosophical discussion. Isabel Dalhousie, heroine, heroic consumer of hot beverages, amiable busybody and lady of means, is the part-time editor of the Journal of Applied Ethics (I’m wondering if there’s a philosophers’ in-joke here that I’m not getting – any philosophers reading this are welcome to enlighten me). She finds the raw material for closely-argued ethical dilemmas in all kinds of everyday situations, from the etiquette of talking to a stranger who has fallen over in the street or to the person who has bought the painting one intended to purchase oneself at a gallery opening to the propriety of exposing financial cheats or disguising one’s intense dislike for someone that a loved one holds in high regard. She argues through these dilemmas at length, in her head, with her housekeeper, with friends or on occasion with complete strangers. And we, dear readers, are with her every step of the way. Approximately a third of your reading time will probably be devoted to following such arguments. I found it very enjoyable and interesting – and whether or not you feel the same will probably govern whether you sing this novel’s praises or condemn it as a tedious bore.
But, understated and perhaps not even obvious until you’ve put the book down, are the sharp contrasts between Isabel’s abstract high-mindedness and her practical actions. Her relationship with her niece Cat for example – what are her true motives in interfering so thoroughly in that young woman’s life? Isn’t she hoping to rewrite history and somehow prevent Cat making the mistakes that she, Isabel, has made? They are so pervasive that she’s spent much of her adult life alone following a disastrous early marriage. And has she any idea that she’s doing this? I didn’t get the feeling that she does. And what of the powerful attachment Isabel has formed for Jamie, Cat’s ex-boyfriend, who is barely half her age? She makes enormous demands on his time and patience and I wonder how her motives regarding him would stand up to her own otherwise clear-sighted philosophical scrutiny were she not so emotionally involved in the situation. Isabel has enough self-knowledge to know she finds him very attractive and that to try to act on this attraction would have disastrous consequences. But not enough to back off discreetly and leave the poor boy alone to live his own life instead using her power as a confidante of Cat as leverage for his attention and affection. When she’s faced with a real-life ethical dilemma, involving an unfaithful young man (of a type who would be extremely familiar to any reader of 44 Scotland Street) can she maintain her detachment and put her principles into practice? No, it all flies straight out of the window. And I think that, in this contrast between what Isabel says, what she thinks and what she does lies the true interest of this book.
I am concluding, having read three of Alexander McCall Smith’s books from three different series in quick succession that he has a rare and unusual gift for a male author – that of writing convincing and multi-dimensional female characters. And I am struck by the parallel he seems to draw again and again between those for whom we feel a powerful sexual attraction and those who are good for us in a practical and emotional sense. The perfect example is Mma Precious Ramotswe’s appalling first husband, the feckless and vicious jazz musician Note Makoti, and her kind, but entirely sexless and excitement-free second husband JLB Matekoni, with whom she is able to build a fulfilling and stable life but who appears to share no more physical or emotional intimacy with her than you’d expect from the average business partner. This does not seem to me to be so far from Isabel Dalhousie’s dichotomy – between her charismatic but thoughtless and unfaithful ex-husband John Liamor (who never puts in an appearance but is constantly mentioned) and the strange, awkward simulacrum of a relationship she’s got herself into with Jamie. Meanwhile, over on Scotland Street young Pat MacGregor is experiencing a seemingly inexplicable sexual attraction to an intolerably vain and arrogant young man who, she knows rationally, she dislikes powerfully but still fancies like all hell, so much so that she seems incapable of sane behaviour in his presence.
What is it that the author is trying to tell us?
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