The Right Attitude to Rain, Alexander McCall Smith

David Gauld, Music

(February 2) Aunt Lois gave me this since she had an extra copy and we’d been talking about Alexander McCall Smith on Christmas Day. I was glad to get it because I loved the first five books of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, and I’d heard various people (including Aunt Lois) say they liked the Isabel Dalhousie series as much, if not more, than they liked the Botswana books.

But, at first blush, this book baffled me. I expected it to be different from the Botswana books, but I wasn’t prepared for it being different in the way it was. The narrative voice is all brisk and conventional, instead of tender and cheeky as it is in the Botswana books; the main character, Isabel, is not presented with the same kind of cozy familiarity as Precious is; and, moreover, Isabel is, basically, borderline neurotic, constantly and exhaustively analyzing everything that happens and every little choice she has to make in terms of their ethical ramifications. It’s the very definition of Zen mindfulness. In fact, an hour reading this book is more like an hour spent doing mindful meditation than anything else.

On top of this, nothing really happens, and Isabel is not really a sleuth; she’s a bit curious about people and their motivations, but that’s it. There’s very little discussion of rain, even. It seemed flat and formal, like the David Gauld painting above, at first, and I didn’t think I’d end up pursuing the series.

But by the end of the book, the pleasant tone and pace had won me over a bit. I was wondering if I had been wrong to read the third of a four-book series first, and willing to give another title in the series a go.

Well, four books later, I can say that it was definitely a mistake to read The Right Attitude to Rain first. Now I know that A GREAT DEAL happens in The Right Attitude to Rain and that I spoiled my potentially much greater enjoyment of it by reading it out of order. Also, I now appreciate Isabel’s philosophical conundrums as “the mysteries” she solves, and have to concede that her thorough working out of her ethical duties is a quite acceptable kind of sleuthiness.