THE SWEET REMNANTS OF SUMMER

Alexander McCall Smith

(Little, Brown, £18.99)

Although The Sweet Remnants of Summer is the 14th novel from the ridiculously prolific Alexander McCall Smith to feature Isabel Dalhousie, it’s my first encounter with her. The best frame of reference I have to series this long-running are detective novels – and, it has to be said, Isabel does have the makings of a good sleuth, being the proud possessor of an inquisitive brain that can’t be still for a moment. So how do Dalhousie books work? What are the ground rules?

Leading a seemingly idyllic, truffle-scented life in Edinburgh’s well-to-do Merchiston with musician husband Jamie and two young sons, Isabel edits a philosophy journal called the Review of Applied Ethics. One of the Great and Good who support the arts, attend gallery openings and always get asked to serve on committees, she has the financial security of an inheritance; and she’s generous with it, always ready to whip out her cheque book for a good cause or someone in need.

Word having got around that she’s someone with “a gift for sorting things out for people”, she agrees to help a fellow member of her gallery’s advisory board, Laura Douglas, whose son, an independence supporter, has cut himself off from his unionist parents. They think his mind has been poisoned by one of his friends and ask Isabel if she can intervene.

While she’s mulling over how best to deal with this – or even if she should – other matters rear their heads: an accusation arises that her older son bit another child in his class; her niece has broken up with her new husband and already found another man; and the conductor of Jamie’s orchestra is rumoured to be having an affair with one of the candidates for a vacant position.

Taking Isabel’s philosophical expertise as its starting point, The Sweet Remembrance of Summer is a gentle exploration of morality, with unconnected events providing the themes for its characters’ interior monologues as they mull over the latest twists and turns of their lives. The question of how pushy she should be about putting her children through music lessons sets Isabel on a train of thought that ends with an interrogation of her religious convictions. Yet, at another point, she asks, “Why do we dislike people who are just too good?” a propos of nothing more than the blurb on a shampoo bottle.

Nor is Isabel the only one who frequently has to snap back into the moment and apologise for being lost in thought. Husband Jamie remarks that “being married to Isabel had many positive features, but it also involved a form of moral self-scrutiny that could be demanding.” At worst, these characters’ animated discussions can give the impression that they’re revelling in having their cleverness, eloquence and middle-classness reflected back at them. “Isabel and I have been talking about language and euphemism,” is how Laura introduces Isabel to her husband, which, as first impressions go, doesn’t bode well.

The plot might be thin, but it’s the digressions that tell the story. Through them, McCall Smith’s characters learn the value of continuously assessing and reappraising one’s actions rather than adhering to fixed, dogmatic views, and of learning how to live ethically from one’s interactions with family and social circle rather than grand, overarching theories.

True, it’s cosy and effortlessly charming light reading. But there’s a grain of grit if you look for it: an implicit acknowledgement that being a good person isn’t all sweetness and light, and that hard choices are an inevitable consequence of striving to do the right thing.

ALASTAIR MABBOTT