Stephen Conroy, Untitled (Self Portrait), 2005(?)
(November 23) Wow, this is the first time in years I’ve sat down and read a book in two and a half days! And looked forward to getting back to it in between readings, and was eager to read the next in the series (like I was following a Joss Whedon TV show). I had totally forgotten what that was like. (And for me Isabel is particularly addictive.)
There are at least six books recently listed on this blog that I have not yet even read at this point in time; I can’t seem to work up the dedication to finish them (despite they’re all being very short, since I was trying to be realistic about catching up).
Then along comes wonderful Isabel Dalhousie and wonderful Alexander McCall Smith and I am reading like a fiend, ignoring the internet.
This one had the usual adorable jumping-to-conclusion-iness of Isabel Dalhousie novels, and realistically so in this case (I seem to remember complaining previously about the trope getting a little hack-y).
Isabel and Jamie had another son!
Sometimes the reason behind an Isabel Dalhousie “mystery” is light and comic; sometimes it’s a bit dark and/or verging on criminal. This one was not terribly dark -- a lonely man tries to spark widespread dislike for someone he’s jealous of -- but it is a bit more sad than usual (and maybe not something to be left to clear up on its own??).
For the art above, I was looking for Scottish paintings of men crying, since Isabel notes at one point that she’d witnessed three separate men crying within the space of 12 hours -- Jamie, Eddie and Rob McLaren -- and five males altogether within the same time frame if her two baby sons were counted.
But then I saw these paintings of men by Stephen Conroy ... and he was born in Helensburgh, which one of the characters in the novel is also from (or has a summer home in or something)... and so it is the perfect choice. This portrait does evoke Rob McLaren’s embarrassment for me.
