10 compelling new reads
SCOTS literary giant Alexander McCall Smith was just eight when he took his first manuscript to a publisher.
He tells iN10: “It wasn’t published, but I got a lovely letter.”
Then he breaks into a belly laugh: “The story was titled He’s Gone – but who he was and where he went I do not remember!”
Humour is a huge part of life for the affable author. And there is no shortage of it in his latest offering in the 44 Scotland Street series, A Time Of Love And Tartan.
Set in Scotland’s capital – where he lives with his wife Elizabeth – the new book, out at the end of this month, is suffused with love and laughter, sometimes bordering on the surreal.
With comic mastery he weaves into everyday New Town everything from bogus head hunters to embarrassing encounters in a bookshop over Fifty Shades Of Grey and Scotland’s controversial named person scheme.
It’s bold and brave, and deliciously arresting, but manages to stay true to life with its incisive reflections of human nature.
Surprisingly, Alexander – a former professor of medical law – had never anticipated his literary success.
The 68-year-old reveals: “I always had, as I grew up, an interest in books, but I do not know if I saw myself doing what I am doing today.”
He wrote short stories for pleasure. Then, in the ’70s, he won a writing competition.
Encouraged, he found himself an agent and wrote more than 30 children’s titles, always in his spare time.
But it was on a professional trip to the University of Botswana in 1981 that he was inspired to pen what was to become the first in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series.
He recalls: “I was visiting friends and we went to a see a lady who was giving them a chicken for lunch. She ran after the chicken, caught and dispatched it. She was the first seed of thought for the story.”
While the lady in question is not the fully-fledged lead character Mma Ramotswe he says: “She represents the type of person I met in Botswana; resourceful, very intuitive and hard-working. The kind of person you would like to sit down and have tea with.”
It was a turning point. Fifteen years ago he gave up his university career to write full-time. And six decades on from his first childhood attempts, life has come full circle.
He smiles: “I get stories sent to me by children all of the time. One little boy came round to the house with his mum. He had written The Great Toffee Theft. It’s great fun.”