Edinburgh

The Christmas Bookshop, by Jenny Colgan

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I somehow ended up with three books in a row about a woman working in a bookshop, one that is floundering and perhaps about to go out of business.

One of the things I cover in my writing classes is how an idea alone is not a story. An idea such as the one above is too general; it needs to be expanded with details about the character, her situation, what she wants and why, what kind of trouble she’ll have getting it. Then the story begins to take shape.

These three vastly different books illustrate how one idea can fuel any number of stories.

In this one, Carmen loses her job when the department store where she works closes. Her elderly parents, wanting the family rebel to get out of their house and get on with her life, persuade Carmen to go live with her sister Sofia in Edinburgh.

Sofia is practically perfect in every way that Carmen is not. Married to a handsome, well-off man who adores her, Sofia finished university and now works as a lawyer, while managing her gorgeous home and three small children.

Sofia isn’t thrilled about having her difficult sister move in, but is pregnant again and agrees that an extra pair of hands, however incompetent, would be helpful on the nanny’s days off. Carmen, who shares her family’s low opinion of her, can’t help being snarky with her sister. Still, Sofia finds Carmen a job with one of her clients.

Mr. McCredie’s bookshop in a touristy area of Edinburgh has been losing money for years, and he is on the verge of bankruptcy, probably because he spends his time reading his books rather than trying to sell them. Carmen is dismayed by the dusty shop windows simply containing piles of books, and Mr. McCredie’s eccentric way of organising the books on the shelves.

Seeing how the bristly, socially awkward Carmen finds her way around not just the bookshop, but also the community of merchants on the street is fascinating. As her efforts begin to make a difference, her self-esteem begins to rise. Among the customers she meets are a lanky, reticent man from the university and a famous author who welcomes the chance to drop his New Age façade with Carmen.

Colgan handles Carmen’s progress beautifully, keeping it realistic, so that we, along with Carmen, re-evaluate the people in her life. The ending was a bit bar-fetched, but the book is such fun that I was ready to forgive that. I especially loved Mr. McCredie and his bookshop/home: a magical warren of spaces.

What really sets this book apart is Cogan’s use of Edinburgh as a character. Carmen comes to the city with all kinds of negative preconceptions. With her, our eyes are opened to the charm of the ancient city, especially during the holiday season. Cogan’s descriptions made me want to hop on a plane and go. I thoroughly enjoyed my one visit there; now I’m longing to return.

Stayed tuned for the other two bookshop books.

What novel have you read where the setting is a character?

Author Tours

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When I went to Toronto many years ago to visit my son who had moved there, he took me on a tour of the city to show me the places in Michael Ondaatje’s masterful novel In the Skin of a Lion. I had loved the novel, along with the other Can Lit books my son had recommended (Timothy Findley, Alistair MacLeod, Jane Urquhart, David Adams Richards, Margaret Laurence, etc.) at that time not available in the U.S. Somehow, seeing the actual places mentioned in Ondaatje’s book made it come alive for me in a different way.

Perhaps you have had this experience. If you read a book set in a place you know well, you have a different relationship with the story. When I read an Anne Tyler book or one by Laura Lippman, I recognise the places in and near Baltimore that they mention, and the story becomes that much more real.

A few years ago when I was in Edinburgh, I went on an Ian Rankin tour. His books are true works of literary art, and I highly recommend them. I first found one in a Toronto bookstore; they weren’t available in the U.S. and the online bookstore thing hadn’t taken hold yet. He immediately became one of my favorite authors, and I’ve enjoyed watching his immense talent increase with every book, especially those featuring detective John Rebus.

The tour was fun, taking us to places that cropped up in his books as well as to buildings where he and fellow Edinburgh authors lived. I also made an effort to look on my own for things referenced in his books, such as the miniature coffins found on Arthur’s seat and Rebus’s favorite bar.

Recently I enjoyed a tour in Quebec City that took us to places mentioned in Louise Penny’s Bury the Dead. Seeing where the incidents in the story took place, following Inspector Gamache’s footsteps, enjoying the restaurants and bistros mentioned made the story real in an entirely different way. If nothing else, I saw how short a distance it was in some cases from one place to another, making it easier to understand how Gamache could move so quickly between them.

Our tour guide Marie had some inside information: Penny herself had stayed in the house where Gamache stayed with his friend Emil in the story. Marie had seen inside and verified that it matched the description, just as we could verify the descriptions of other, more public places mentioned.

Marie speculated that Penny had eaten in these restaurants, ridden the funicular, visited the Cathedral-Basilica of Notre-Dame de Quebec. I thought: Of course she did! That’s how you research a book. All good writers do that.

When you travel, I encourage you to read novels set there and, if possible, take a tour of the places mentioned. Let me know how that changes your perception of the book.

Have you ever taken a tour of places mentioned in an author’s book? If you read a book set in a place you know well, how is the experience different?

Even Dogs in the Wild, by Ian Rankin

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In this twentieth book in the Rebus series, the detective himself has retired from the force. A team from Glasgow has come to Edinburgh out of concern that the crime family they have been building a case against is looking to move into the vacuum left by Edinburgh crime boss “Big Ger” Cafferty’s imprisonment. Now released, supposedly due to ill health, Rebus’s long-time nemesis is watching the jockeying of those trying to take his place.

Meanwhile, Rebus’s protégé Siobhan Clarke is investigating the murder of an important former prosecutor that looks like a burglary though nothing has been taken. Clarke discovers that the victim received a threatening note just before the murder. When a shot is fired at Cafferty while he’s at home, and a similar note is put through the door, the only person Cafferty wants investigating the threat is Rebus.

My introduction to the Rebus novels came in the early 1990s when I found Knots and Crosses in a Toronto bookstore. Rankin’s books were not yet available in the U.S. and online bookstores were not yet a thing. I’ve followed the series ever since, often rereading earlier books, enjoying the complexity and ever-deepening characterisation.

Writing any series, much less a long-running one like this, must be enormously hard. Of course, you have a steady group of characters and a setting. But you can’t let either get stale.

Then there are technical issues. Not only do you have to keep track of what has already happened in previous books, but you must find a way to make each book new. Plus there’s the challenge of providing enough information in each book so a new reader isn’t lost while not so much that a dedicated reader gets bored.

Rankin excels on all counts. It helped having John Rebus be a policeman, so there would be new cases to solve for each book. However, Rankin made the choice to have Rebus age in real time, so eventually the detective hit mandatory retirement age. The author’s solution has been to bring forward Clarke while having her still consult with Rebus on cases. And of course the ex-cop can’t resist tinkering.

Rankin also introduced another character who works in the Complaints division, the equivalent of Internal Affairs, even having him investigate Rebus. Now assigned to assist the Glasgow team, Malcolm Fox brings his attention to detail to the team while struggling to gain the trust of the other detectives who consider anyone who has ever worked in Complaints a traitor.

By the time of this book, Fox, Clarke and Rebus have forged an informal alliance despite their very different ethical codes. Rebus came of age in a time of much looser policing which puts him at odds sometimes with Clarke and even more so with Fox.

My enjoyment of the series has been enhanced by a visit to Edinburgh itself. The city seemed familiar after being there so often in my imagination. I enjoyed tracking down places from the stories and even went in search of the tiny dolls from an earlier book. Rankin has said that he started the series as a way to get to know Edinburgh; through it he has succeeded in introducing others to the city as well.

What I like best about this particular book is the way Rebus’s relationship with Cafferty is developed. Because Cafferty is targeted as well, Rebus must consider him a victim. Plus both of them are older and have been more or less forcibly retired, so they have more in common that just their history with each other. The nuances of the relationship shift throughout the story, adding shades to what we know of both characters from previous novels.

As always in Rankin’s books, even rereading one, I found myself wondering how in the world he would bring all the different strands to a conclusion, yet trusting that he would. If you like mysteries, if you want a challenging puzzle and complex characters, delve into Rankin’s Rebus series.

Have you read any of the Rebus books? Do you have a favorite?

The Charming Quirks of Others, by Alexander McCall Smith

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I’ve been working my way through this series set in Edinburgh featuring Isabel Dalhousie. Well, work isn’t really correct since each story is delightful. As a moral philosopher, Isabel “considers” problems and mysteries that others request her help with. Once someone has asked for her help, she believes she is morally obligated to try.

In this, the seventh entry in the series, Isabel has been asked by the wife of a trustee to help an exclusive boy’s school in their search for a new headmaster. The shortlist contains only three names, but the trustee has received an anonymous letter saying that one of the three has a skeleton in his closet that would disqualify him. Isabel is asked to look into their backgrounds to determine which is the problematic candidate.

After agreeing, despite her fiancé Jamie’s usual objection to her investigations, Isabel is surprised to discover that her niece Cat’s new boyfriend is one of the three. Cat is rather intense, going through boyfriends like candy and frequently arguing with Isabel, yet the young woman runs her successful deli with a firm hand. Jamie was once one of those boyfriends, and his relationship with Isabel—they have a charming toddler and plan to marry imminently—is a constant, if minor, source of tension between Cat and Isabel. However, underneath it all, the two women are devoted to each other.

Isabel practices her philosophy not only as editor of the Review of Applied Ethics and the now-defunct Sunday Philosophy Club of the earlier books in the series, but in every aspect of her life. When one of her former colleagues-cum-enemies on the Review magisterially informs her that he is going to write a review of the new book from his partner in crime—the crime of trying to force Isabel off the magazine—Isabel debates the ramifications of each possible response. If she refuses, would that be seen as an act of vengeance? Should she be generous and forgive the two men for present and past indignities?

She also considers just how generous she ought to be when a tragic young cellist falls for Jamie. Jamie is a bassoonist and rather younger than Isabel which feeds her insecurity about their relationship.

It is this application of philosophy to the smallest details of life that I find intriguing in these books. Many people know the author from his No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. Like those books, the Dalhousie books belong to what Dave King calls the gentle genre: “straightforward tales of ordinary people in mostly every-day, low-key situations.” Authors like D.E. Stevenson, Miss Read, and James Herriot manage the difficult task of composing these stories that become comfort reads for many of us, without falling into “either banality or saccharine gooeyness.”

The solution Dave King identifies is the use of a small town with many characters interacting, noting that “Even Alexander McCall Smith’s Scotland Street books, technically set in Edinburgh, are limited to a neighborhood that acts in most ways like a small town.” “In fact,” he goes on, “most gentle novels draw their tension from this forced association. The connections with people who think very differently from yourself can help amplify the importance of small things.”

That’s certainly true here, with a variety of characters, some new and some familiar from earlier books. However, it’s the philosophy that elevates Isabel’s stories, not the labored dense prose that I struggled with in Philosophy 101, but a common-sense application of moral considerations to the minutiae of daily life.

Added to that are the descriptions of Edinburgh itself and the surrounding countryside. I recently visited that city for the first time, and I love the memories these books call up. The books aren’t perfect, of course. Jamie and Cat are rather two-dimensional, and Isabel herself doesn’t change much as the series progresses. Also, her rather privileged life may rub some readers the wrong way.

For me, they make a nice counter-balance to my other, more challenging reading. Like Alexander McCall Smith’s other books, these make for perfect bedtime reading, when you want to calm your mind and prepare to enter a world of good dreams.

Which Alexander McCall Smith series is your favorite?