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praise for
A L E X A N D E R M c C A L L S M I T H
“Utterly enchanting. . . . It is impossible to come away from an Alexander McCall Smith ‘mystery’ novel without a smile on the lips and warm fuzzies in the heart.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“McCall Smith’s generous writing and dry humor, his gentleness and humanity, and his ability to evoke a place and a set of characters without caricature or condescension have endeared his books . . . to readers.”
— The New York Times
“Pure joy. . . . The voice, the setting, the stories, the mysteries of human nature. . . . [McCall Smith’s] writing is accessible and the prose is beautiful.”
—Amy Tan
“Mr. Smith, a fine writer, paints his hometown of Edinburgh as indelibly as he captures the sunniness of Africa. We can almost feel the mists as we tread the cobblestones.” — The Dallas Morning News
“Alexander McCall Smith has become one of those commodities, like oil or chocolate or money, where the supply is never sufficient to the demand. . . . [He]
is prolific and habit-forming.”
— The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
“[McCall Smith] captures the cold, foggy, history-drenched atmosphere of Edinburgh . . . with a Jane Austen–like attention to detail.”
— USA Today
alexander mccall smith
4 4 S C O T L A N D S T R E E T
Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the huge international phenomenon, The No. 1 Ladies’
Detective Agency series, and The Sunday Philosophy Club series. He was born in what is now known as Zimbabwe, and he was a law professor at the University of Botswana and at Edinburgh University. He lives in Scotland.
b o o k s b y a l e x a n d e r m cc a l l s m i t h i n t h e n o . 1 l a d i e s ’ d e t e c t i v e a g e n cy s e r i e s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Tears of the Giraffe
Morality for Beautiful Girls
The Kalahari Typing School for Men The Full Cupboard of Life
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies
i n t h e s u n d ay p h i l o s o p h y c l u b s e r i e s The Sunday Philosophy Club
Friends, Lovers, Chocolate
i n t h e p o rt u g u e s e i r r e g u l a r v e r b s s e r i e s Portuguese Irregular Verbs
The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs
At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances The Girl Who Married a Lion and Other Tales from Africa 44 Scotland Street
44
SCOTLAND
STREET
44
SCOTLAND
STREET
A L E X A N D E R M c C A L L S M I T H
Illustrations b y
I A I N M c I N TO S H
a n c h o r b o o k s
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York
FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, JUNE 2005
Copyright © 2005 by Alexander McCall Smith Illustrations copyright © 2005 by Iain McIntosh All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Originally published in Great Britain by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd., Edinburgh, in 2005.
This book is excerpted from a series that originally appeared in the Scotsman newspaper.
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McCall Smith, Alexander, 1948–
44 Scotland Street / Alexander McCall Smith ; illustrations by Iain McIntosh.
p. cm.
eISBN 0-307-27679-1
1. Young women—Fiction. 2. Art galleries, Commercial—
Employees—Fiction. 3. Edinburgh (Scotland)—Fiction.
4. Apartment houses—Fiction. 5. Roommates—Fiction. I. Title: Forty-four Scotland Street. II. McIntosh, Iain, ill. III. Title.
PR6063.C326A613 2005
823'.914—dc22
2005043627
w w w . a n c h o r b o o k s . c o m
v1.0
This is for Lucinda Mackay
Chapter title
vii
Preface
Most books start with an idea in the author’s head. This book started with a conversation that I had in California, at a party held by the novelist, Amy Tan, whose generosity to me has been remarkable. At this party I found myself talking to Armistead Maupin, the author of Tales of the City. Maupin had revived the idea of the serialised novel with his extremely popular serial in The San Francisco Chronicle. When I returned to Scotland, I was asked by The Herald to write an article about my Californian trip. In this article I mentioned my conversation with Maupin, and remarked what a pity it was that newspapers no longer ran serialised novels. This tradition, of course, had been very important in the nineteenth century, with the works of Dickens being perhaps the best known examples of serialised fiction. But there were others, of course, including Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, which nearly landed its author in prison.
My article was read by editorial staff on The Scotsman, who decided to accept the challenge which I had unwittingly put down. I was invited for lunch by Iain Martin, who was then editor of the paper. With him at the table were David Robinson, the books editor of the paper, Charlotte Ross, who edited features, and Jan Rutherford, my press agent. Iain looked at me and said: “You’re on.” At that stage I had not really thought out the implications of writing a novel in daily instalments; this was a considerable departure from the weekly or monthly approach which had been adopted by previous serial novelists. However, such was the air of optimism at the lunch that I agreed.
The experience proved to be both hugely enjoyable and very instructive. The structure of a daily serial has to be different from that of a normal novel. One has to have at least one development in each instalment and end with a sense that something more may happen. One also has to understand that the readership is a newspaper readership which has its own very special characteristics.
The real challenge in writing a novel that is to be serialised XII
Preface
in this particular way – that is, in relatively small segments –
is to keep the momentum of the narrative going without becoming too staccato in tone. The author must engage a reader whose senses are being assailed from all directions – from other things on the same and neighbouring page, from things that are happening about him or her while the paper is being read.
Above all, a serial novel must be entertaining. This does not mean that one cannot deal with serious topics, or make appeal to the finer emotions of the reader, but one has to keep a light touch.
When the serial started to run, I had a number of sections already completed. As the months went by, however, I had fewer and fewer pages in hand, and towards the end I was only three episodes ahead of publication. This was very different, then, from merely taking an existing manuscript and chopping it up into sections. The book was written while it was being published. An obvious consequence of this was that I could not go back and make changes – it was too late to do that.
What I have tried to do in 44 Scotland Street is to say something about life in Edinburgh which will strike readers as being recognisably about this extraordinary city and yet at the same time be a bit of light-hearted fiction. I think that one can write about amusing subjects and still remain within the realm of serious fiction. It is in observing the minor ways of people that one can still see very clearly the moral dilemmas of our time. One task of fiction is to remind us of the virtues – of love and forgive-ness, for example – and these can be portrayed just as well in an ongoing story of everyday life as they can on a more ambitious and more leisurely canvas.