44 Scotland Street
44 Scotland Street
Book for May 2010
Group 1
44 Scotland Street is an episodic novel by Alexander McCall Smith, the author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. The story was first published as a serial in The Scotsman, starting 26 January 2004, every weekday, for six months. The book retains the 100+ short chapters of the original.

The story revolves around the comings and goings at No. 44 Scotland Street, a fictitious building in a real street in Edinburgh. Immediately recognisable are the Edinburgh chartered surveyor, stalwart of the Conservative Association, who dreams of membership of Scotland's most exclusive golf club. We have the pushy Stockbridge mother, and her prodigiously talented five-year-old son, who is making good progress with the saxophone and with his Italian. Then there is Domenica Macdonald who is that type of Edinburgh lady who sees herself as a citizen of a broader intellectual world.

In McCall Smith's hands such characters retain charm and novelty, simultaneously arousing both mirth and empathy. 44 Scotland Street is vintage McCall Smith, tackling issues of trust and honesty, snobbery and hypocrisy, love and loss, but all with great lightness of touch. Clever, elegant and funny, this is a novel that provides huge entertainment but which is underpinned by the moral dilemmas of everyday life and the characters' struggles to resolve them.

The 44 Scotland Street series consists of:
  • 44 Scotland Street (2005)
  • Espresso Tales (2005)
  • Love over Scotland (2006)
  • The World According to Bertie (2007)
  • The Unbearable Lightness of Scones (2008)
About the Author
Alexander McCall Smith
Alexander McCall Smith, CBE, FRSE, (born 24 August 1948) is a Zimbabwean-born Scottish writer and Emeritus Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh. McCall Smith was an expert on medical law and bioethics and served on British and international committees concerned with these issues. He has since become internationally known as a writer of fiction, being best known as the creator of the The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series.

He is an amateur bassoonist, and co-founder of The Really Terrible Orchestra. He helped to found Botswana's first centre for opera training, the Number 1 Ladies' Opera House, for whom he wrote the libretto of their first production, a version of Macbeth set among a troop of baboons in the Okavango Delta.

Other books we've read by the same author:

Tears of the Giraffe
The Nr.1 Ladies' Detective Agency