Alexander McCall Smith ‘Espresso Tales: The Latest from 44 Scotland Street’

This was an emergency buy; I certainly don’t normally seek out the opus of Mr McCall Smith. Like the rest of the British population, I have read some of his No.1 Detectives Agency series, but apparently unlike most of them, thought they really weren’t very good. I have nothing against easy reading or light fiction per se (in fact I’m a veritable lightweight compared to most of my peers I suspect) but the tales of Precious Ramotswe were just too twee, patronising and contrived in a ‘’oh look at the sweet simple African woman who’s canny in the way of the bush’’ kind of way. All power to McCall Smith who has furnished many tube carriages with their reading matter and no doubt made much money in the process, but this kind of ‘’lite’’ hurts my teeth. If I dare tempt a mobbing, it’s rather similar to Harry Potter in my opinion. Face it guys, it’s a kid’s book, it doesn’t have an adult sub-plot, there is nothing rather different about it, apart from a darned good marketing plan. Nothing wrong with enjoying them, but don’t start to pretend it’s anything more than children’s fiction (of course there are children’s books with genuine adult-orientated themes & nuances, such as Phillip Pullman’s Dark Materials triology which is light years ahead of Harry Potter). [I am now cowering in a corner waiting for the Rowling posse to come to beat me up]. Don't even start me on The Da Vinci Code or we'll be here for hours.

So I only bought ‘Espresso Tales’ because not much else was available in the Hotel Bookshop (still the Oberoi; yes, I did read a lot there; I was a social recluse, remember?). Therefore it was much to my surprise and all-round happiness that it turns out that McCall Smith is indeed capable of better. ‘Espresso Tales’ is a compilation of his weekly installments in The Scotsman (a bit of a cheek with the whole Dickens-emulation thing if you ask me; but you didn’t), which works pretty well in novel format, keeping the pace moving fast for a plot-junkie like myself. The highlight for me was definitely 6-year old Bertie, a mild-mannered genius with an insufferable mother who forces him to wear pink dungarees and go to a therapist (who, incidentally, she is attempting to seduce). Gentle chuckles all round. It’s also faintly soothing to read about a city (Edinburgh) which I know so well; probably the closest I get to being homesick for somewhere I’m not from (admittedly not the first time it’s happened). Next time I’m in an airport lounge I might just look for the sequel…

Paul Auster, ‘The Book of Illusions’

There aren’t many authors who I consistently like and ‘’follow’’, but Paul Auster is one of them. I first read ‘’Oracle Night’’ on the recommendation of a friend from Book Club, and since then, if I do venture past the 2-for-1 section to the Proper Grownup Shelves (where you can only see the spines!), I know there’ll be at least one book I’ll like courtesy of this chap.

This novel bears all the trademarks of a good Auster – stories within stories; the power of coincidence; a cast haunted by the past. Briefly, it’s the story of a man who has lost his family in an air crash, who happens upon an old film by a forgotten silent movie star. Cue a series of coincidences, a chase across the country, and an everpresent feeling that All Is Not As It Seems. I’m not sure it’s his best – it certainly is a bit too long – but this is Quality writing with a capital Q.

Toby Litt, ‘Finding Myself’

In true form, I read rather a lot of books on my holiday (indeed my friend Lisa will tell of when I was ostensibly on a ‘’wild’’ group holiday on a Greek island but behaved more like a skiving librarian; it’s not unusual). So, now I’m back in the land of the Ancients, I have to cast my mind back to various hotel rooms and airport waiting lounges in an attempt to remember what I read. Luckily, I was jotting down some random musings on the trip and there’s a few hints back in the margins…

So, way back in the Oberoi hotel in Calcutta I rather enjoyed Toby Litt’s book, ‘’Finding Myself’. At first glance it manages the dubious distinction of sounding simultaneously pretentious and Chick Lit. If we’re going to get all textual-analysis about it, it’s a first person narrative which is being annotated by a second person and retrospectively edited in the light of further events. Not promising, eh? But contrary to expectations it’s really quite good. A novelist decides to write a book by inviting a group of friends – who she expects to behave badly – to a country house for a month, where she will observe them and then write it all up. The second person annotation (handwriting on top of the typewritten text) is by her editor, who is also one of the people invited to the house and is frequently involved in the story. The editor proves to be one of the most amusing characters, despite only being ‘’present’’ by a few words on each page.. gosh, this is starting to sound like a GCSE essay, apologies. Anyhow, there are plenty of mildly ludicrous twists and modern ‘’Big Brother’’ references, but in the end it’s clever without being annoying. Recommended reading for laying around a pool in Calcutta.

''Buttertea at Sunrise'', Britta Das

Being on your own in a foreign country makes you think waaaay too much. And as someone who is already guilty of that in the extreme, it can be a bit ludicrous. Combined with my apparent inability to strike up a conversation with strangers (despite the fact this hotel is full of young Europeans in their 20s and 30s, clearly working for NGOs and the like) it does strange things to the head. One topic on which I have been frequently mulling for the past 2 days is how shockingly inelegant Northern Europeans (read: me) are, particularly on holiday. Right now I am in proper Brit-on-holiday-in-developing-country mode: i.e. I am scruffy, wearing ill-fitting clothes in various shades of khaki which I would never go anywhere near at home. What is it exactly that causes British women to throw all that Trinny-and-Susannah advice to the wind as soon as we’re out of the Schengen area? Anyhow, this effect is significantly exacerbated when in India, for the simple reason that even the most casual look of the average Indian woman is gorgeous elegance brought to life. Hence I have been plodding (an apposite verb in the situation) around the hotel looking like a monster (particularly with my uns-tyled hair, which friends will tell you is definitely not a good look), brushing past legions of beautiful Indian women in wonderful saris and perfect hair. In addition, the world played a cruel joke of dealing me some pretty, tiny, Thai women for my spa treatments, which meant a constant battle to suppress the thought that they must be horrified by this big white fleshy short-haired creature. But enough! The great thing is, it’s liberating not to have to care about what you wear or look like, and within a few days I will have got everything back under perspective (and hence a collective sigh is heard around the world).

It’s not the first time I’ve been the odd one out however – in Malawi it was bizarre to realize one’s fame in the entire neighbourhood, and oddly disconcerting to know that it was impossible to be anonymous in a crowd. The same held true for Britta Das, the author of the latest book I read, ‘’Buttertea at Sunrise’’. As part of my traditional pre-trip Amazon splurge I bought this as it one of the few books available on Bhutan (I did also attempt to buy a Bhutan guidebook but after promising it would come within 10 days Amazon seems to have lost the ability to locate it….). It’s the story of a German-born Canadian woman who goes to work as a VSO volunteer in remote Bhutan for a year. As a tall blonde she too became the tourist attraction of the area, although she had no intention of letting this get in the way of her integration with the community, working as a physiotherapist in the local hospital. The memoir doesn’t particularly attempt to cover the more general culture of Bhutan, its history or suchlike, but it is a nice portrait of a small community and it is Britta’s relationships with her workmates which is the most interesting part of the book. Particularly when you come to realize that ‘Das’ is an Indian surname and she’s not married at the start of the book…. So I am now armed with a few facts which may or may not be helpful when I head up north on Friday: a popular dish is chillies inside soft cheese; it gets so foggy you can’t dry your underwear overnight; there are white monuments called Chortens which mark out trails and also perform religious function (quite what, I didn’t catch). Sadly my lack of a guidebook means I’m none the wiser about anything else, but perhaps that’s a good way to travel.