BOOK REVIEW: ‘The Forgotten Affairs of Youth’

THE FORGOTTEN AFFAIRS OF YOUTH
By Alexander McCall Smith
Pantheon, $24.95,272 pages

MR. KILL
By Martin Limon
Soho, $24,375 pages

She’s back, that verbose Scottish philosopher Isabel Dalhousie who has never been known to use 100 words when 2,000 would do.

The remarkably prolific Alexander McCall Smith, whose literary talents are divided between his ladies’ detective club in Botswana and Scottish philosophy, focuses this time on his favorite thinking woman in Edinburgh. In “The Forgotten Affairs of Youth,” there seems to be no topic that Ms. Dalhousie cannot worry to death. Even her patient and charming partner, Jamie, occasionally reflects that while he wanted her to think about things, there were times when he wanted Isabel to be less serious.

“He wanted her to know there were times when she might not be right.”

This is a point that occurs to every reader of what goes on in the Dalhousie mind, yet it never seems to occur to Isabel that now and again she might accept things as they are instead of examining the entrails of every subject.

Mr. McCall Smith has put a plot twist into the latest Dalhousie ramble, and Isabel shows her capacity for determination (even if she fusses about it later) in a sad little romantic saga of an abandoned baby and a lost father. In between meditating on whether changing her toddler son into different outfits at lunchtime should become a trend calling for morning clothes to be changed into afternoon clothes “to reflect the lengthening shadows,” Isabel takes on the problems of Jane Cooper, an Australian who is also a philosopher, heaven help us.

On their first meeting, they launch into a discussion about the difficulties of the identity. After what seems like several chapters, they get to the point of their meeting - which is that Jane is the illegitimate child of a onetime student in Edinburgh.

Adopted by a couple who went to Australia, she has returned to her roots as it were, and is now looking for the father she never knew in Scotland. Isabel, who can put her heart as well as her mind into solving problems, tracks down a man who might well be Jane’s father. At that point, she decides he isn’t and goes off on another tack while Jane waits to have her life reorganized.

In between, Isabel comes down with mushroom poisoning and has to be rushed to a hospital, where she delivers a dramatic speech assuring Jamie that she will love him and their little boy, Charlie, forever. That’s before discovering she isn’t dying after all. What is really complicated is that Jamie bought the mushrooms from the delicatessen run by Isabel’s difficult niece, Cat, with whom she has a tumultuous relationship, partly because Jamie used to be Cat’s boyfriend until she rejected him.

However, she apparently has never quite forgiven Isabel for snapping up Jamie, who is about 10 years younger than she is. The age difference, as you might imagine, haunts Isabel, who spends far more time than seems necessary brooding about it and endlessly analyzing it. It doesn’t seem to trouble Jamie, but then he is a sensible young man who is rarely dramatic and obviously has a sense of the ridiculous.

But the poisoned mushrooms must be reported to the health department to satisfy Isabel’s conscience and presumably protect others at risk. Although agonizing about it, Isabel does just that. Cat’s reaction is rage, and Isabel is accused of betraying her family. You can imagine that this is fodder for Isabel’s endless self-examination, and you would be right.

While Mr. McCall Smith sounds like the gentlest of men who probably thinks well of most people, he also sounds as though Isabel is the little voice that sometimes sounds in his ear when he is drowsy. Yet Isabel is in many respects a kind and likable woman, and if she weren’t so devoted to practicing her art of philosophy, she might be even more likable. However, Jamie loves her, so she is clearly doing something right.

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Martin Limon’s “Mr. Kill,” a slam-bang military beat-em-up, would benefit from having more of the legendary Korean detective known as “Mr. Kill” than 8th Army investigators, Sgts. George Sueno and Ernie Bascom.

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