Expresso Tales

Alexander McCall Smith has written many wonderful little books that leave his readers feeling good. His series of books on the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency are a joy to read, as are his books on The Sunday Philosophy Club. However, this book did not leave me with the same happy feelings of those books. Last year, McCall Smith published the first of this series -- 44 Scotland Street -- which was first published as a series of 110 columns in the Scotsman newspaper in Edinburgh. The book chronicles the lives of the residents of an apartment building at that address in Edinburgh. Each chapter in the book is approximately three pages long, the length of the newspaper column for that edition. This latest book in that series -- Expresso Tales -- was first published as a series of 105 additional columns and continues to chronicle the lives of the same residents, along with their friends, families and acquaintances.

McCall Smith describes the people with such color that he makes them seem real. Their characters are full and rich. However, the problem I have with this book is that the characters in the book are incredibly boring people who lead incredibly boring lives. Each one is flawed in ways that make them unattractive, and they do nothing interesting at all in their lives. The author seems to take pleasure in creating quirky characters, and to write amusing little stories about their quirkiness. In a few instances, one of the characters almost does something interesting, or attempts to do something interesting, but McCall Smith quickly makes the attempt fail in an embarrassing way, and the character hurries to return to his or her boring life, grateful for not being successful in adding any pleasure or joy to his or her life. The characters have no vitality, no life, no joy. They are boring people who lead boring lives.

And yet, McCall Smith includes nuggets of beauty, such as this: "She had to share her joy, as Lou knew that joy unshared was a halved emotion, just as sadness and loss, when borne alone, were often doubled."