Friday, December 11, 2009

The Right Attitude to Rain by Alexander McCall Smith

This is a pleasant love story set in Scotland, told with warmth and color. Of course, one character stands out, Isabel Dalhousie. She is an independently wealthy but unostentatious editor of an obscure journal of philosophical ethics. Not theoretical ethics but applied ethics, mind you.

The author, against all odds, is to my mind completely successful in presenting a woman who is both thoughtful and full of thought. She takes self-awareness to a very high level without self-absorption. She is constantly ruminating but not to the point of serious self-doubt. It is analysis without paralysis.

I enjoyed her and laughed at her moral hesitations. But as with most ethical dramas, I remain unsatisfied. Ethical satisfaction requires a foundation. Scotland, home, friends, social convention can inform and delight but fail to answer the deepest questions of love.