AT THE VILLA OF REDUCED CIRCUMSTANCES

Name: AT THE VILLA OF REDUCED CIRCUMSTANCES
Author: Alexander McCall Smith
ISBN: 1-4000-9509-3

by Alexander McCall Smith & illustrated by Iain McIntosh ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 4, 2005

Though the first story is piffle, the second is a worthy apotheosis for Smith’s charmingly clueless pedagogue. (Illus....

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Smith completes the saga of Prof. Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld (see below) with a pair of long stories that transport him to Cambridge University and a faded Colombia salon.

“On Being Light Blue” indulges the eminent scholar’s long-time wish for a visiting appointment at Cambridge courtesy of his colleague Prof. Dr. Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer’s equally ardent desire to appropriate his office during his absence. Von Igelfeld’s tenancy at Cambridge is a series of lightweight comic sketches: his mistaking Prof. Porter for the College Porter, his attempt to prevent visiting American opera writer Matthew Gurewitsch from using his shared bathroom without lying about its availability, his seduction into some collegiate intrigue—the last of which supplies an anticlimax worthy of Botswana private detective Precious Ramotswe (The Full Cupboard of Life, p. 158, etc.). If this tale depends a little too completely on Smith’s ear for the absurdity of academic persiflage just as it’s lifting off from reality, the title story takes von Igelfeld to an altogether higher plane. Returning to the Institute for Romance Philology, he’s settling into his amusingly small-minded routine, holding his blotter up to a mirror to see whether he can identify Unterholzer’s handwriting, when he learns that his magnum opus Portuguese Irregular Verbs has been checked out of the Institute’s library in his absence. The upshot finds von Igelfeld in Colombia, where he receives a series of increasingly improbable appointments, spends a memorable few days at Señora Dolores Quinta Barranquilla’s Villa of Reduced Circumstances, comes face-to-face with a guerilla uprising, and distinguishes himself as a statesman and war hero before floating back home.

Though the first story is piffle, the second is a worthy apotheosis for Smith’s charmingly clueless pedagogue. (Illus. throughout with b&w block prints)

Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2005

ISBN: 1-4000-9509-3

Page Count: 128

Publisher: Anchor

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2004

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.

Pub Date: July 11, 1960

ISBN: 0060935464

Page Count: 323

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

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GENERAL FICTION

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.