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Dec 04, 2009GailRoger rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
My husband is fond of saying that Canada is Scotland's most successful colony. (I don't know whom he's quoting; I must ask him sometime...) Maybe that's why I feel strangely at home in Bertie's world. I believe this book appeared in installments in The Scotsman,, so in a sense, it's a little like Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City. Except this definitely isn't San Francisco. It's Edinburgh, and like Alexander McCall Smith's other stories set in Edinburgh (his "Isabel Dalhousie" series), the crises here, like the characters and their eccentricities, are gentle. You want sex? Violence? Excitement? Don't read this book. You want musings about the human condition? Mild satire? Loveable and fallible characters? Be my guest.