by Alexander McCall Smith
This book is another in McCall Smith's series about Isabel Dalhousie, the Editor of a Philosophy journal, who lives in Scotland.
I have really enjoyed McCall Smith's other books and series, e.g. La's Orchestra Saves the World, the No. 1 Ladies Dective Agency and the books in the Corduroy Mansion series but I really didn't enjoy this book..
I enjoy his books because of the eccentricity of his characters, which are portrayed in a very caring way. Most of the time you relate to and care about the characters because of their faults and peculiarities.
However, this character is self-centred, self-absorbed, unbelievably naive and unsympathetic. In this story she is very smug with her happy life. She is approached by a woman she hardly knows and asked to intervene with a man who is the father of her child, the result of an affair. The woman doesn't want her husband to learn the truth.
Isabel decides to intercede, what sense does that make? Then she finds out that the woman is not only using her but is actually doing things that threaten her own reputation. She should be incensed and challenge the woman. She does confront her but does so in a very passive way. For all her "philosophizing" about what it means to do right and be responsible for others and for the truth -- she does not act appropriately.
A very disappointing story, I won't ever read one of these again, I will stick to his other books.
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