Larger	44 Scotland Street Author: Alexander McCall Smith
	Book Information Publisher: Abacus Book Type: Paperback Rating: 17 ISBN-13: 9780349118970 - ISBN-10: 0349118973 Publication Date: 2005 Pages: 326 Book Reviews

Alexander McCall Smith's Scotland Street occupies a busy, bohemian corner of Edinburgh's New Town, whe the old haute boourgeoisie finds itself having to rub shoulders with students, potes, and portraitists. And number 44 has more than its fair share of the street's eccentrics and failures.

When Pat -- on her second cap year and a source of some worry to her parents -- is accepted as a new tenant at number 44, she isn't quite sure how long she'll last. Her flatmate Bruce, a rugby-playing chartered surveyor, is impossibly narcissistic, carlelessly philandering and infuriatingly handsome. Downstairs lives the gloriously pretentious Irene, whose precocious five-year-old is in therapy after setting fire to his father's copy of the "Guardian." And then there is the shrewd, intellectual Domenica MacDonald, mysteriously employed but a sharp-eyed observer of the house's activities in her spare time.

Dry, funny, hugely entertaining, with its glittering cast of rogues, oddballs, and innocents, McCall Smith's Scotland Street is proof that the author of "The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency" can be as witty, incisive, and humane in observing his native Edinburgh as his adopted Botswana.