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    A Distant View of Everything
    A Distant View of Everything
    A Distant View of Everything
    Audiobook7 hours

    A Distant View of Everything

    Written by Alexander McCall Smith

    Narrated by Davina Porter

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In this latest installment of Alexander McCall Smith's ever-delightful and perennially best-selling series, amateur sleuth and philosopher Isabel Dalhousie is called upon to help when a matchmaker begins to question her latest match. A new baby brings an abundance of joy to Isabel Dalhousie and her husband, Jamie-but Isabel's almost four-year-old son, Charlie, is none too keen on his newborn brother. In fact, Charlie refuses to acknowledge Magnus, and Isabel must find a way to impress upon her older son the patience and understanding that have served as guiding principles in her own life. These are, of course, the qualities that bring Rosemary Hipple, an old acquaintance of Isabel's, to seek her help in a tricky situation. Rosemary is something of a matchmaker and has brought together a cosmetic surgeon and a successful banker at her most recent dinner party. But new information comes to light about the cosmetic surgeon that causes Rosemary to doubt the auspiciousness of the match. Isabel agrees to find out more, but her inquiries take an unexpected turn, and she starts to wonder which of the two she should be investigating after all. As ever, her intelligence, quick wit, and deep empathy for others will come to her aid as she grapples with the issues that are her bread and butter: friendship and its duties, the obligation of truthfulness, and the importance of perspective.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJul 18, 2017
    ISBN9781501955631
    A Distant View of Everything
    Author

    Alexander McCall Smith

    Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the award-winning series The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency, and he now devotes his time to the writing of fiction, including the 44 Scotland Street and the Isabel Dalhousie series. He is the author of over eighty books on a wide array of subjects, and his work has been translated into forty-six languages. Before becoming a full-time writer he was for many years Professor of Medical Law at Edinburgh.

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    Reviews for A Distant View of Everything

    4/5

    70 ratings7 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Delightful and exasperating. McCall Smith is a keen and tireless observer of human nature, and absolute Grandmaster in the art of digression. Those who crave progression will cringe. As Isabel says, there will be another one, because... that’s what it is.

      Come on: be kind!
    • 3/5
      My Isabel does ramble on doesn't she? I may not have been in the mood to read this book. I just could not get into it and did not find it very stimulating.
    • 4/5
      Isabel and Jamie have a new baby, another boy, named Magnus. They and their housekeeper, Grace, are thrilled. Their older boy, Charlie, not so much. He's certain he can come up with good arguments for excluding Magnus from the family!

      But that's just a normal parenting challenge, and they'll cope as most parents do. Bigger puzzles include Cat's new part-time shop-assistant, Peg, whom Cat seems unusually enthusiastic about. Where did Cat meet her? Why is she so vague about her background?

      Isabel's own puzzle, brought to her by an old school friend, concerns a man whom she has introduced to a friend of hers, whom she now fears may be after the friend's money rather than true love. In fact, she has heard that he may be a man who routinely seduces women into parting with their money. This is, of course, not really Isabel's puzzle, but her school friend Bea's, but Isabel, despite Jamie's warning against getting involved where she doesn't need to, can't help taking it on when Bea brings it to her.

      Meanwhile, Jamie has his own secret, that he finds difficult to share with Isabel. He's visited his doctor...

      This latest entry in the series is, as always, a visit with old friends, including Brother Fox, and the further growth and working out of the relationships among Isabel, Jamie, and those closest to them. I found it, as always, altogether quietly enjoyable.

      Recommended.

      I bought this audiobook.
    • 3/5
      A pleasant read in an ongoing series (#11), thin plot but some wonderful lines.
    • 3/5
      The 11th installment of the Sunday Philosophy Club is here. Some things change, new baby Magnus and new deli employee Peg, while more things stay the same, Isabelle salivating over Jamie, bossy Grace the housekeeper, crazy Cat at the deli, sullen Eddie, and last but not least, an appearance by brother fox. In this outing Isabelle is asked to meddle in or rather investigate in the life of a doctor who may be a grifter. Although I have a fondness for the series this novel began to irk me. While having a conversation with a friend Bea, every time Bea spoke, it launched another tangent off in Isabelle's head making the passage really annoying to follow. It was comic relief when Eddie finally called Isabelle out on her habit of thinking of something else and smiling when talking to a person. That aside I have become invested in the characters over the course of 11 novels. I always look forward to a visit to Edinburgh and I always get a gem of wisdom out of the novel. In this book it is the idea that we have to be careful how we talk to our friends. One rebuke can undo a thousand positive interactions and end the friendship. Well said Mr. McCall Smith.
    • 3/5
      I do love Isabel Dalhousie, the philosopher by profession and the protagonist of this series by McCall Smith, but this installment seemed a bit simplistic and lukewarm and sugary, and maybe a tad moralistic as well. But as usual with this author, there is always a quote or two (or more!) that is worth repeating in each of his books, and here is one on how Isabel considers the topic of "the divine": "... she felt there was something there - some force, some principle, that lay beyond our understanding but that we sensed and that, crucially, we needed. The identity one gave to that did not matter too much, although the clutter with which we surrounded it did. Some of that clutter was downright poisonous, insisting that there was only one way of recognizing the divine, that all other views of it were simply wrong." Not a totally new notion but I thought it was nicely put...
    • 5/5
      Delightful and undemanding, as this series always has been. Nor is there anything wrong with an "undemanding" read. Is this really the eleventh in the series? Where does the time go? A philosophical question for Isabel to ponder, perhaps?