Issue #69
Last Update October 31, 2010
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Review Corduroy Mansions by Gert Innsry June 30,2010 Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the amazingly successful No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. The reason for that success is easy to understand: the books are charming, well written and give us an insight into a culture and part of the world that we don't usually have much contact with. With "Corduroy Mansions", Mr. Smith begins another series, a somewhat less successful one.
"Corduroy Mansions" was originally written as an experiment in on-line episodic creation, similar to the serial publication of several Dickens novels in newspapers. It was posted to the internet in the on-line version of the UK's Telegraph newspaper daily. Since its original appearance, it has come out in Audiobook, print and Kindle editions, and has achieved a wide following.
For the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books, the mystery at the heart of the plot was never the main point of interest, though it provided a motive force for the action of each book. The main point of interest was Mme. Ramatswe and her assistants, her husband and her friends, and their interaction with each other and the changing mores of the day. With slightly stilted diction implying translation from another language, the characters in these books are lively and endearing. The Corduroy Mansions series takes place in London (much of the time in the apartment building called Corduroy Mansions), and there is little that is charming about these characters, though most of them are likable, or at least, in the case of the more self-absorbed characters like Oedipus Snark, amusingly cartoonish. The vegetarian ex-sniffer dog Freddie de la Hay is a nice touch, as is the fact that Oedipus Snark’s mother, the psychiatrist Berthea Snark, seems to dislike him as much as everyone else does. The central character appears to be the wine merchant William French, who occupies a flat with his leech of a son Eddie. Much of the plot, such as it is, revolves around attempts to get Eddie to move out.
The absence of a mystery adds to the disappointment; there is little urgency to make what plot there is progress, and the whole book feels amorphous. Events do occur that move the characters forward in their lives, and eventually, if the reader persists to end of the book, the plot thickens enough that we begin to look forward to some resolution.
The book ends somewhat abruptly, after tying together some of the plot threads and starting a few new ones (for the next book in the series, one assumes), as if the author had gotten tired of the whole enterprise, or had decided that this was a good point to make the separation between one book and the next. It happens that way with serials.
By the end, the characters had achieved some individuality and begun to grow on this reviewer, and the author seemed to have finally found a voice that could engage the reader. Perhaps the next book will continue that growth and begin to rival The No. 1 Ladies' books.
New York Stringer is published by NYStringer.com. For all communications, contact David Katz, Editor and Publisher, at david@nystringer.com