Changes

|summary=I look forward each time to the familiarity of returning to characters that I know and like, especially with a writer that a I trust and admire. Take it slowly, and let his words wash over you, leaving you feeling calm and safe and that perhaps the world isn't such a terrible place after all.

I devoured this book. I am, if you haven't guessed already, an [[:Category:Alexander McCall Smith|Alexander McCall Smith]] fan, and he is one of those rare writers whom I actually buy in hardcover so eager am I to read each new installment instalment in his various series of stories. I remember when I read the first ''Sunday Philosophy Club'' book that I was initially a little unsure about Isabel. She's such a rambler, in her own little internal monologues, that I sometimes lost track of what on earth she was thinking about. But she grew on me, and I now love how her mind goes off in little tangents as she's thinking. She's a wonderful, conflicting character, both likeable and annoying. She's often blind to what's staring her in the face, she's a terrible meddler and gets caught up and tangled in other people's business all the time, but she's essentially a good person, and very realistic as a character.

My only quibble with her in recent books is that her little boy, Charlie, is so unbelievably well behaved and she is such a calm and contented mother! Of course , she has her housekeeper, Grace, to help out with child care, and Jamie is a very hands-on dad so that makes a difference, but all the same she never seems to be running out of the door, hair unwashed, odd shoes on, with a screaming child in tow which is pretty much my experience of motherhood! Isabel always seems so... awake... and Charlie, her little boy, is a marvel, happy and cheerful at all times, who eats anything and everything including, in this book, olives. This isn't unheard of as I do know other tiny tots who love an olive or two... but I personally rolled my eyes a little at those parts since my toddler won't go near any food item that's green or remotely healthy.

So anyway, back to the book in question. Well, we're still in beautiful Edinburgh and there are more local references for those who know and love the city. I like the little snippets of Scotland that McCall Smith slips in here and there, through description, language, locations and social conventions etc. There are occasionally phrases that stick in my mind - here he's speaking about the old Scottish language ''that had words for this little bit of a small island, this land of rain and clouds and shafts of poetry'' which I loved, and also when he has another character say says ''there's a certain sort of look that you get a lot of in Scotland, in which the eyes are, well, almost translucent. You look through the eyes and you see something else - you see a whole country, the light made thin by Scotland. You know our light, how thin it is; you know our colours.''