The Sunday Philosophy Club

I bought this book as a fan of McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series of novels, as no doubt many others did. Anyone expecting a rehash of No. 1, but with a Scottish location, will be disappointed, And whilst the main character, Isabel, is not as engaging as her No. 1 counterpart, she has grown on me.

Botswana is swapped for Scotland, Gabarone for Edinburgh. The detective plot allows us to explore the thoughts, feelings and motivations of Isabel in much the same way as we have grown to know Precious. It is more important to finish this book with a better understanding of people, than to have "solved" the crime ahead of Isabel.

There is a place for Isabel alongside Precious in my heart, and I will be following her adventures.

How Dull (5/5 people found this helpful)

I am a great fan of the NO1 Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander so I was eager to start this new series.
I have to say I was extremely disappointed. This book was tedious, it drags and waffles to a seriously indecent extent. The story itself is quite interesting but it is unfortunately not a story with a lot of content, meaning or interest.

A gentle read, perfect for rainy Sunday afternoons (2/2 people found this helpful)

The Sunday Philosophy Club is the beginning of a new series featuring the middle-aged and single Isabel Dalhousie. I'm going to confess right from the start that I did not take to Isabel as a character. In part, this is because I found that she rather stretched belief. She's an independently wealthy, middle-aged woman (who married the love of her life, only to be left by him) who has retained her looks but who isn't pursuing a relationship and who also happens to be a philosopher. I don't doubt that there are women like this in real life, but it is an awful lot to take in in what's actually quite a short book (coming in at just under 300 pages) and I did think that McCall Smith leveraged in the backstory with her lover John Liamor a little too obviously. Given that this is to be a series, I think that some of the backstory could have been alluded to so as to give the reader the idea that there's more to come before being drawn out in later novels. As it is, I'm not sure that there's enough left to discover about Isabel that would keep me reading.

It's a shame that I didn't take to Isabel given that the book is really about her and her thoughts on modern day society. In fact, I thought that the summary on the back of the book was a little misleading because whilst the novel does begin with a death (which I thought was conveyed in a really believable manner, complete with a lovely touch about how the victim's shirt has risen up as he falls to expose his midrift), Isabel's investigations are really almost an afterthought - a thin skeleton on which to hang the characterisation.

McCall Smith focuses the bulk of the book's attention on Isabel's relationship with Jamie (a young man who previously went out with her niece and who she has hopes will become a nephew-in-law) and with Cat, her niece who is currently dating an unsuitable man called Toby. Again, neither Jamie or Cat convinced me as characters as both are essentially sounding boards for different aspects of Isabel's personality: Jamie represents a sounding board for her ideas on what is desirable in a man (given that she admits to having an attraction to him) and Cat a sounding board for the importance on settling down with the right man. Toby barely gets a look in beyond the dismissed suitor and in fact, the way that McCall Smith dispatches him via the highly contrived discovery of infidelity was a little disappointing. In addition, whilst I could understand the basis of Cat's relationship with Isabel, I couldn't quite buy into why Jamie would want to spend so much time with her - the attraction aspect on his part is not wholly convincing and by offering a rationale his wish to stay close in some way to Cat (given that he hopes for a second chance) makes him seem a little pathetic and weak.

I did however enjoy the relationship (platonic) between Isabel and her housekeeper Grace. Grace with her superstitions and ability to nail a character felt very real to me and whilst she's relegated to a role of reinforcing Isabel's confidence and listening to those problems she can't share with Jamie or Cat there's a lot of scope for development there.

I do want to say that whilst I found this book disappointing, it is nevertheless a pleasant read and I found the segments looking at issues of moral philosophy to be interesting and easily understandable (albeit it again, sometimes leveraged into the story) and it's good to see a writer who is not afraid to run concepts and ideas by his readers just to make them think about what they would do or how they feel about something. There is at the same time though, a curiously old-fashioned feel to this book - more one for Agatha Christie fans I think than for fans of modern thriller writers (which are more urgently plot driven affairs). Oh - and you won't see any meetings of the titular Club - it's more a teasing device to pique your interest.

Not the Sunday Philosophy Club (2/3 people found this helpful)

Not your average detective story but one with lots of intellectual and philosophical excursions. We start with the fall of a young man to his death from the upper circle of an Edinburgh theatre. Our Scottish philosophical Miss Marple suspects it was no accident and sets about puzzling out the mystery. My problem was I want a detective thriller to move at pace but Isobel is a philosopher and there is much thinking to be done about matters ethical, philosophical and romantic.These slow the pace so I wonder if this book is a meeting of fish and fowl The Sunday Philosophy Club never comes to meet but our heroine does conclude the case. One certainly gets a feel for Edinburgh in this book, a city that is a village.

A gentle detective story (4/5 people found this helpful)

It is understandable but, I think, unhelpful that many readers should compare this book with the author's earlier series about the No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Some who are great fans of the latter have obviously not taken to this novel, which is in quite a different league. Edinburgh does not for us have the exotic appeal of Botswana; and Isabel Dalhousie, the `detective' in this book is more cerebral and her wisdom is less home-spun than that of Precious Ramotswe. What they do have in common is a feeling of social responsibility to see that justice is done, though Isabel, who is a moral philosopher, will muse over the basis of that feeling; and she does this in a manner which is not forbidding, but on the whole rather accessible. She is in any case given to much musing, to examine a variety of aspects of life in a rather intellectual manner. So, yes, she may strike one as a bit of a blue-stocking, but I found her reflections interesting and involving, and I was made to think about the questions she asked herself. Given that there is a dreadful death which she feels drawn in to investigate, there is not too much urgency and only a tense moment or two in a story which is allowed to meander gently along - this clearly has irritated some readers - as she reflects not only about how the death might be explained but also about more mundane experiences of every day life and about her own and her niece's experiences of being in love. The characters are, I think, well drawn, and the writing is slips down easily.

I have to declare an interest: I have written a book, to which I have given the title `Philosophy and Living' because philosophy appeals to me most when it addresses the problems of how we ought to live. I therefore feel some kind of kinship with Isabel Dalhousie.

Alexander McCall Smith

Reader Reviews:

The Same But Different? (2/2 people found this helpful)

How Dull (5/5 people found this helpful)

A gentle read, perfect for rainy Sunday afternoons (2/2 people found this helpful)

Not the Sunday Philosophy Club (2/3 people found this helpful)

A gentle detective story (4/5 people found this helpful)

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