Corduroy Mansions (Alexander McCall Smith) Conclusion

One of the most impressive aspects of this book – and my impression is that most, if not all, of McCall Smith’s other books follow suit – is that the writing manages to grip our interest tightly despite the fact that there are no events of a drastic, shocking, or violent nature.  Yes, Terence almost died in his experiment with electricity, but even that was ultimately downplayed as just another of life’s random twists.  But the closest thing we get to an Antagonist is Snark, and he is merely irritating; not threatening anyone with violence or mayhem.  Essentially, the book is Antagonist-free, and there are no murders, bombs, threats, or significant tragedies to speak of.

This author does tend to get philosophical, to the point of including little mini-lectures in his “The Sunday Philosophy Club” series.  Here, we get a short discussion between Hugh and Barbara on the question of religious belief.  Hugh speaks of an advertisement he saw for Atheism on the side of a bus, and wonders if ‘ “…it’s best not to voice doubts about beliefs that mean a great deal to someone else.”  “Yes,” Barbara said.  “I agree.  I suppose that being kind to one another includes not saying things you think may be true but which threaten to upset other people unduly.  People may need their beliefs.  For all I know, in their essence, in the heart of what they say, those beliefs may be expressing something that is very true – something that people really need to help them through life.”’  This “utilitarian” view of religion has always struck me as disingenuous, but the point is well made.

This sudden relationship between Hugh and Barbara has us wondering if Hugh is a con artist, or worse.  Barbara comes close to wondering that herself.  Certain passages seem to put this to rest, and yet the issue remains unresolved as the book comes to a close.  The relationship between William and Marcia as “roommates” appears to be satisfactorily resolved as we see Marcia suddenly taking an interest in Basil.  However, the James/Caroline situation takes an unexpected twist:  ‘ “But it’s not going to work, is it?”  For a moment, he said nothing … Then he looked at her and his look was full of tenderness.  “No, you’re right.  It won’t.  And I’ve been meaning to tell you something.  I’ve met somebody else.  Somebody … well, somebody who makes more sense for me – for the way I am.”  She felt immediate relief, mixed with pleasure for him.  She wanted James to be happy.  “What’s his name?” she asked.  It was a misjudged question.  “It’s a she, actually.  Her name is Annette.” ’ Ha!  A beautifully placed bombshell!  Suddenly, Caroline is not so eager to give him up; vows to pursue him after all, in fact!

And Basil Wickramsinghe turns out to have some real depth, as well. To Caroline, who admits to having “man trouble”:  ‘ “There are three sorts of man trouble,” he said.  “There is one where there is no man.  There is one where there is one man.  And there is one where there is more than one man … That probably seems very difficult, but it isn’t.  Not really. You can find the answer by doing a very simple thing.  Close your eyes and then tell me which one you see … It’s rather like dream analysis.  Dreams are meant to tell us about our inmost desires, aren’t they?  But the problem with dreams is that we can’t anticipate in advance which desires they will reveal.  If you do what I suggest, your conscious mind can instruct your subconscious mind to respond.” ‘  And, upon, trying this, she sees neither one.  She sees a perfect stranger, indicating that neither man is right for her, which, true to her nature, she goes on to ignore!

So, how does the author resolve the central tension of the book, which consists of all these various virtually unrelated storylines, these “loose threads”?  Simple; William throws a party at his flat and invites everyone who lives at Corduroy Mansion and their guests!  The reader mingles with the characters by way of overhearing snippets of conversation which help to tie up the loose ends to some extent – leaving open plenty of questions that just cry out for a serialization (which, of course, was the intention after all).  And he closes out the last chapter with a poem William wrote and reads to the group which more or less sums up the feelings of everyone there – and sums up the premise of the book as well.

September’s book of the month; “Killing the Shadows,” by Val McDermid!

“McDermid is our leading pathologist of everyday evil … the subtle orchestration of terror is masterful.”  Guardian

“Killing the Shadows exerts the dangerous pull of a rip tide, drawing us towards its unsettling resolution.”  Independent

“A multi-layered novel, as hauntingly strung together as a hangman’s noose.”  Sunday Express

Week 1:  Chapters 1-14 
(First post, 9-5-14)

Week 2:  Chapters 15-29
Week 3:  Chapters 30-43
Week 4:  Chapters 44-Epilogue 

Corduroy Mansions (Alexander McCall Smith) Chapters 51-75

McCall Smith has an attitude toward politicians that resonates with many of us, which reveals itself in this book in, among other ways, the character of Oedipus Snark, MP (Member of Parliament).  Other authors I like seem to have a similar problem with government officials, particularly Dean Koontz.  I have encountered on Facebook those who dislike Koontz’s political leanings as expressed in his writings.  “I don’t like his politics.  He should just avoid mentioning politics in his novels,” they say.  McCall Smith is less grating; yet I will not be surprised to find similar comments made of him.  The so-called polarization of politics seems to be more and more a division between two personality types; there are those of us who are “So Paranoid That They Don’t Trust the Government” and those who are “So Naïve That They Do Trust The Government.”  (At least this is the way they appear to think of one another.)  I happen to be one of the former, as McCall Smith and Koontz both seem to be.

Snark represents everything that is wrong with politicians.  ‘If Snark were to be found covered in love bites they would surely be self-inflicted.’  Not really typical of this author’s more understated humor, this reminds one more of Mark Twain or Will Rogers.  Either way, making fun of them is arguably better than lynching them.  ‘Oedipus was greedy: in spite of all his political rhetoric about sharing, he meant sharing only after he had helped himself to his own, somewhat larger share.’  And on the heels of this, we are offered a hint regarding a solution to the problem: ‘I am finally free of him, she thought; I am free.  And freedom had been so easy – as it often is.  The step is taken, the resolution made, and the shackles fall away.’

The author apparently has a good sense of just how much dreaded politics he can get away with and dwells on it sparingly enough.  Other timely topics, as we’ve seen, are touched on with equal deftness.  Teenagers, for example:  ‘Eddie had been an affectionate boy, enthusiastic, friendly in a puppyish way; William had been so proud of him, had loved him, and then something had gone wrong.  Eddie had changed, had grown surly and distant.  At first William had thought it was the normal teenage change – that mutation which transforms likeable children into odious beings.  But the teenage years had passed and the old (young) Eddie had not returned…’  Of course, this says as much about fathers’ unrealistic expectations as it does about their sons.

And then, there’s Arrested Development in all its ugly manifestations, especially the plague of being stuck in your college days.  [Nowhere is this more appalling than here in the heart of Longhorn Country.] ‘”Listen Rupert,” said Gloria, “you really have to do something about this.  You need to sort yourself out.  No, don’t make that face.  You’re going to have to listen to me.  And what I want to say to you is this: you live far too much in the past.  No, listen to me – don’t look like that.  Listen.  You need to get your past sorted out.  You need to tackle all the baggage you carry with you … you have to sort out … Uppingham – you really do.  Uppingham is in the past, Rupert.  You’re thirty-six.  You left Uppingham eighteen years ago.  I know that it’s a wonderful school.  I know that you were very happy there.  But it’s past business, Rupert.  You haven’t got a housemaster any more.  We have a bedroom, Rupert, not a dorm.”’  Gawd, I know so many people who need to hear this every day until it sinks in!

And, lest we forget that our author is a wordsmith: ‘”I know a place where one can get the most wonderful seafood,” Hugh said.  “Absolutely fresh.  Clams.  Lobsters.  Octopi.”  “Octopodes,” muttered Barbara.  She regretted it the moment she said it.  “Octopodes?”  She had to explain.  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be pedantic.  Octopi as a plural form suggests a Latin origin.  But the word ‘octopus’ is Greek and the plural should not be the Latin –i form but octopodes…”’  Amaze your friends!  Or irritate them, whichever.

 

 

Next Week: Chapters 76-100, final chapters




 

September’s book of the month; “Killing the Shadows,” by Val McDermid!

“McDermid is our leading pathologist of everyday evil … the subtle orchestration of terror is masterful.”  Guardian

“Killing the Shadows exerts the dangerous pull of a rip tide, drawing us towards its unsettling resolution.”  Independent

“A multi-layered novel, as hauntingly strung together as a hangman’s noose.”  Sunday Express

Week 1:  Chapters 1-14
Week 2:  Chapters 15-29
Week 3:  Chapters 30-43
Week 4:  Chapters 44-Epilogue 

Corduroy Mansions (Alexander McCall Smith) Chapters 26-50

It continues to strike me as curious that, despite the soap opera construction and content of this book, it remains riveting to me.  As I mentioned previously, each thread follows a distinct situation involving only tenuously related characters and skips around in a seemingly random pattern from one situation to the next.  Usually this is a source of at least mild irritation to me, but somehow it doesn’t bother me here.  We have the William/Eddie/Marcia situation, where William acquires a dog, one “Freddie de la Hay,” in an attempt to get his son, Eddie, to move out.  Also, there's Caroline’s situation with James and the question of whether he is really gay after all.  There is the “Snark” situation, revolving around the MP (I Googled MP to find “Member of Parliament” – sorry, not British…) Oedipus Snark, his wife, Berthea and her New Age brother Terence. The Barbara Ragg connection with Snark could be considered separately.  The roommates Dee, Jo, Jenny and Caroline also connect with the other threads in a web all revolving more or less around the apartment house rather sardonically referred to as “Corduroy Mansions.”

Upon reading this synoptic analysis, it really does sound like a soap opera; the kind of book that I would normally not expect to enjoy very much.  Does its appeal reside entirely in the strength of a great writer’s prose?  The writing is very engaging, to be sure, but surely there is more to it than that.  Ayn Rand wrote of a “Sense of Life” that is imparted by any accomplished artist and how that Sense of Life either resonates in a meaningful way or not.  McCall Smith’s way of looking at the world inevitably permeates his writing, and the reader either responds to that or doesn’t.  At the other end of this spectrum would be a writer who prose might be rather stilted, sparse or austere, but who writes of such fascinating topics and events that we are captivated nevertheless.

William’s situation addresses a topic which has become increasingly common; that of a parent who’s twenty-something offspring are still living with them and show no signs of wanting to be on their own.  This is further complicated by Marcia’s schemes to snag him as a mate and the irony of her suggestion that he get a dog – which Eddie would hate – backfiring on her as the dog, Freddie de la Hay, begins to come between her and William, while Eddie decides that having a dog isn’t so bad after all.  Good, solid British humor here, if not exactly Monty Python material.

Berthea’s visit to her brother, Terence, backfires in a completely different way as his mechanical ineptitude practically blows him out of existence when he hooks up his decrepit car’s battery to a jerry-rigged extension cord connected to his house’s electricity, resulting in an ambulance ride to the hospital and a “near-death experience” complete with entering the tunnel and encountering the loved ones “on the other side” before being snatched back from death.  Here’s hoping for a further exploration of that topic!

Jenny’s being fired by Snark right after William has lost his key employee has the reader guessing what will happen next.  Will we be witnessing the complications that can arise when your boss lives in the apartment upstairs from you?  Our author seems to be, on one level, simply touching on many of the contemporary topics and issues that he finds interesting and showing them to the reader in a fresh light, with perhaps the merest hint of editorializing, while staying far away from any moralizing he may have been tempted to engage in.

 

 

 

Next Week:  Chapters 51-75
Week 4:  Chapters 76-100

Corduroy Mansions (Alexander McCall Smith) Chapters 1-25

Sometimes you read an author for the first time, not being very impressed with him/her, but willing to try another of their books on the off chance that you just happened to pick “the wrong one” to start with.  Sometimes the second book is just as bad as the first (for me, James Patterson … bye-bye, J.P.) but other times the second book is much better.  And maybe the third one is even better than the second.  For me, that was this author, Alexander McCall Smith.  The first book of his I read was The Sunday Philosophy Club, which was written well enough, but was constructed in a way I didn’t find all that interesting, though I had really expected to like it.  After that was The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, a big improvement, followed by 44 Scotland Street, which I enjoyed very much.  Corduroy Mansions is starting out in the same vein as 44 Scotland Street.

McCall Smith is a very different kind of writer.  Several kinds, in fact, as his several different series are written in different prose styles, especially the ones set in Africa, which are told as if by someone whose first language was an African language and who learned English later in life.  There is a lightness of style, a breezy urbanity to his writing that contrasts starkly with most of the current crop of Scottish mystery writers who have adopted a dark, foreboding style that some, including McCall Smith, have rather disparagingly labelled, “Tartan Noir.”  I like those books very much myself, but his style is a refreshing change of pace.

This story is constructed in short, uniform-length chapters – 100 chapters in 353 pages – that appear to have been written, as 44 Scotland Street was, for publication in weekly installments in a popular Scottish newspaper.  It has the feel of a serialized story, even down to the quick, almost soap-opera like skipping back and forth from one set of characters and events to another.  From a lesser author, this technique might drive one crazy, but here it drives the pace.  Each short chapter gives us a furtherance of one of the sub-plots as well as some kind of closure so that we don’t feel that our reading has been interrupted.  This is not an easy thing to accomplish, but McCall Smith does it masterfully.

The dialog often sparkles.  When a woman calmly tells another woman, a friend, that she knows she’s having an affair with her husband, ‘Jane…looked at Berthea appreciatively.  “You’re being very mature about this,” she said.  Berthea’s coffee was getting cold.  She lifted the cup to her lips and drained it.  “But that’s why he’s leaving me,” she said.  “Because I’m mature.”’

One loses count of the number of threads running through this narrative as it skips from scene to scene, but one of the most compelling threads is the relationship between Caroline and James.  Here we have the scenario of a young gay man beginning to wonder if he is “phasing” out of being gay into being straight.  Is the author trying to establish that gayness is a matter of “choice,” a “phase” that some people go through, or simply showing that this character is confused about his own sexuality?  The word “gay” never gets spoken aloud as these two early-twenties Londoners dance around the issue, but James feels comfortable talking about his “preferences” with Caroline and we get a good look at his doubts and their sources.  He seems to be hinting that Caroline might be his “type” after all, and she keeps vacillating between allowing herself to fall for this attractive young man or not giving in to a temptation that will probably lead to disaster.  The reader is thus driven to read on!

Next Week:  Chapters 26-50
Week 3:  Chapters 51-75
Week 4:  Chapters 76-100