The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie, #1) in Pick-a-Shelf

Jul 23, 2012 Harold Ogle rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, philosophy

I was disappointed by this book, though it has made a bit of an impression. Having only read some of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books by him before now, at first I couldn't recognize this book as having been written by the same author. But there are some high-level similarities: McCall Smith has written another book with a memorably unique female protagonist, there is a murder mystery, and the protagonist goes about solving the mystery in her own meandering fashion. But beyond that, ther I was disappointed by this book, though it has made a bit of an impression. Having only read some of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books by him before now, at first I couldn't recognize this book as having been written by the same author. But there are some high-level similarities: McCall Smith has written another book with a memorably unique female protagonist, there is a murder mystery, and the protagonist goes about solving the mystery in her own meandering fashion. But beyond that, there's very little in common between the two.

Isabel Dalhousie is an independently wealthy Scots...in the US we'd call her an aristocrat, but that's not really true here. She's just got so much money that she doesn't have to work; she's a bit more like a classical detective in that respect, perhaps one written by Agatha Christie. But more than any other detective character I've ever read elsewhere, Isabel is a busybody, a nosy nellie, insufferably pushing her nose into other people's business, and as such she's really, really hard to like. As if that wasn't enough, her "job" is to edit a philosophy journal called The Review of Applied Ethics, which is something she does clearly to occupy her time and mind, rather than provide income. This is actually a fun conceit for a mystery novel, at least on the surface: the idea that the character applies or doesn't apply her own theories on ethics in her everyday behavior (notably, investigating a murder). But it mostly doesn't play out that way; Isabel's long, meandering musings on ethics in every conceivable situation (and truly, I mean conceivable, as she is constantly imagining scenarios which have little or nothing to do with the plot of the story) make the story drag for the first hundred pages or so. It is a testament to the quality of McCall Smith's craft that I continued with the book at all, and read it as quickly as I did. Generally, when I find books as tedious as this one, they take me a VERY long time to finish: months, or even years, during which I set the book aside and read dozens of other, more engaging works.

There is some humor in the book, but not so much in the interaction between characters as in other books of his I've read, but in two areas: McCall Smith lampoons both the hideous syntax and preposterous esotericism of crossword puzzles (to no point other than ridicule) at several places in the book, and occasionally the conceit of Isabel's hypocrisy between espoused ethics views and her meddlesome ways also provides a smirk. But it's all so drawn-out, and esoteric in its own way: to get to any of that humor, you have to wade through scads of encapsulated comparisons of different philosophers and their attitudes about evil, morality, fantasy, truth, humor, poverty, and so on. Very little of this has anything to do with the plot. To me, the book largely read like a National Novel Writing Month entry, in which the author was behind on his word count and started inserting train-of-thought irruptions to make it a sufficient length. There really was no reason, for me, to have most of Isabel's woolgathering in the story. Even a little bit of it was sufficient for me to establish her character as unambiguously meddlesome and blind to her own ethical failings, prone to daydreaming about philosophy rather than seeing what's really happening. She's just not a likable character, and that brought the book down for me a great deal.

The plot begins with Isabel at the symphony, when she sees a man fall to his death from the upper galleries (colloquially called "the gods" here). She is unable to find peace with this until she sticks her nose into the life of the deceased, digging around, sure that there was some further part to the story, and conning herself into believing that she has a moral requirement to do so, because she was "the last person to see him alive." Unforgivably for a detective heroine in a mystery novel, she doesn't suspect foul play for nearly two-thirds of the book, meaning that she's just poking around because she can't leave well enough alone, and has nothing better to do with her time than to idly pursue anything that takes her fancy. There's really no impetus for the story other than her unseemly and rude curiosity, wanting to find out more about the poor dead young man. If the reactions are at all accurate for Scottish society, it's very different from the US, where such busybody behavior would be soundly excoriated, and possibly a restraining order sought in court.

So, to summarize: I found this a well-written piece about a horribly unsympathetic character, with little actual mystery.
...more

1 like · Like · see review

Aug 27, 2009 Nicki rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary, 2009

I'm afraid I really didn't enjoy this much. I love the No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series but this was a let down. And although you get a good impression of Edinburgh, unless you have a reasonable knowledge of philosophy, music, Scottish poetry and modern art, you're going to be a bit lost with this one at times. ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Sep 19, 2008 Kellie rated it it was ok

Shelves: mystery-thrillers, 2007-reads, bookclub-books

-(#1 of the Isabel Dalhousie series) I am still not sure whether or not I liked this book. I think the author could have omitted a lot of the babbling on philosophical ideas that came from the articles Isabel was reading. I enjoyed the characters, Isabel, Jamie and Cat. I am not quite sure what “The Sunday Philosophy Club” is because they never met. And Isabel never mentioned who was in the club. The writing in this book was so much different than the Precious series, I am surprised they are wri ...more

Like · see review